The Gunners were rocked by injuries to Gabriel Jesus and Mikel Merino before the start of the international break, which has been made worse further by the injury to Riccardo Calafiori in Italy’s win against France a few days ago. Fears of a potential injury were quickly dismissed by the Italian manager with him stating the likelihood of Calafiori being available for their next game. However Calafiori has now left the Italian camp to report back to the club to conduct further tests and rehabilitation. This has been done as a precaution not to risk exacerbating the injury in the next game and to assess how serious his injury could be..
We know about the importance of having strength in depth due to the unforgiving fixture schedule and given the calibre of opposition we’ll be coming up against, this injury (if it proves to be long-term) will weaken us, regardless of whether we have options at left back or not. Ironically, it’s the players we’ve bought during the transfer window that have picked up injuries when they were meant to provide strength in depth, whether from the start or as a backup option. This should be a concern to us (if Riccy goes out for a while) because that will mean that we’re lighter than we were at the end of last campaign due to us moving numerous players on this summer.
Having injuries to key players early on in the campaign should be a worry given we run the risk of falling behind Man City due to the next tough set of fixtures we’ll be playing. Gabi Jesus is reported to hopefully be back before the game against spurs which would represent a big boost due to the more options it opens up for midfield replacements (after Rice’s Red card) against Spurs nevertheless Merino is expected to be out longer, and if Calafiori were to follow him out then it would represent a big problem for Mikel Arteta.
Gooners should not hit the panic buttons yet, given Calafiori’s injury has not been confirmed as serious yet, and his return to London could just be protective measures from the club, however we run the risk of going into a mini-injury crisis if it does prove to be a serious injury.
Will losing our two new signings to injury so early in the season be a big concern to Mikel and the club?
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