By Bulldog Drummond
Arsenal currently have five players listed in the Physioroom.com listing for the Premier League. Above us in terms of injuries are…
- Liverpool: 8
- Crystal Palace: 7
- Everton: 7
- Sheffield United: 6
- Southampton: 6
- West Ham United: 6
Here are the details
| Player | Reason | Further Detail | Potential Return | Status |
| Kieran Tierney | Knee Injury | Apr 21: “Kieran continues to make positive progress and is hoping to be back in training within two to three weeks.” | 15/05/2021 | Ruled Out |
| David Luiz | Knee Injury | Apr 21: “David is making very good progress and is hoping to integrate back into light training with the squad next week.” | 01/05/2021 | 25% |
| Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang | Other | Apr 21: “Hoping to resume light training by the end of this week.” | 29/04/2021 | 25% |
| Martin Odegaard | Ankle/Foot Injury | Apr 21: “Martin is now back in light training and will be assessed ahead of the Everton match regarding his availability.” | 23/04/2021 | 50% |
| Alexandre Lacazette | Thigh Injury | Apr 21: “He will continue to work with the medical team and will be assessed ahead of next week’s matches.” | No Return Date | Ruled Out |
Which makes it look as if we don’t have either Aubameyang or Lacazette for the game this weekend. Goals shall be required from elsewhere.
The tactics for each game are of course now controlled by refereeing decisions. Here are the two clubs compared…
| Tackles | Fouls | Tackles per foul | Yellow cards | Fouls per yellow | |
| Arsenal | 393 | 293 | 1.34 | 42 | 6.97 |
| Everton | 514 | 315 | 1.63 | 51 | 6.17 |
Arsenal remain the lowest tackling club in the Premier League. Everton can undertake 24% more tackles than Arsenal before getting a yellow card.
Top tackles are Southampton who get 57% more tackles in than Arsenal. Top foulers are Fulham who commit 44% more fouls than Arsenal. Top for Yellow cards are Sheffield United with 60.
So finally, after a season of Arsenal recognising the way the cards are stacked against the team, and thus as a result reducing themselves to being the club that commits fewer tackles than anyone else in the Premier League (in order to overcome the referees desire to book them at every turn), we are seeing the result. In this game Arsenal can tackle more often than the opposition before getting a yellow. A major step forward.
Of course making the defence afraid to tackle (which is what the PGMO approach to Arsenal tackling has done) has caused major difficulties for the team, and it is remarkable in the face of this that we have still got such a good defence.
While the wild ravers of TV, radio, blogs and newspapers claim that we need to spend the summer buying a new defence, anyone who has 3 seconds to spare to look at the Premier League table will see we still have the fifth best defence in the league. We are in fact one goal away from being the third best defence in the league.
Is this the time to go and throw out most of our defensive players as many of the ravers and wildmen of football commentary want? No of course not.
Our problem is in attack. We are the ninth best team in the league in attack, and while a single goal conceded marks us out from Manchester United who have the third best defence in the league, we would need 12 goals to become the third best team in attack (which I am sorry to report is Tottenham Hots).
And this is not the best of news with both Auba and Laca out of the running for Friday’s game.
But for this game, as we saw in the last piece on the match (Arsenal v Everton: the statistics point to Arsenal to win 2-0, or maybe 2-1) all is not lost.
Eddie Nketiah is the obvious replacement although rather outlandishly I think some sites are predicting that Folarin Balogun will play. I would have thought that Martinelli who initially did play centre forward (although it seems he prefers the wing) would be way above Balogun in the pecking order at the moment.
More anon.
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A major part of the push to make Arsenal change its mind over the Super League Fiasco came from the immediate rejection of the scheme by Arsenal Independent Supporters Association. Please do visit its website, where you can read the latest on the battle against the Super League
