On Friday I had written today’s post about injuries and how they are really impacting Chelsea and Liverpool this season and how Arsenal are relatively healthy.
Then can the news that Robin Van Persie was carried off on a stretcher playing for Holland yesterday and could be out for months. We will know later today after scans on his ankle are taking. Preliminary indications are that Van Persie has ruptured ligaments in his ankle, an injury that would keep him out for at least three months. But if the scans show a broken ankle, he could be out for most of the season.
With Nicklas Bendtner expected to be out for four to eight weeks as he recovers from groin surgery, the goal scoring weight falls on the shoulders of Eduardo. Suddenly I do not feel so confident about our next set of games. I like Eduardo, but he is not a target man, and I don’t think he is a pure replacement for RVP.
If RVP is going to be out until late February, Wenger might be forced to jump into the transfer window in January and buy a center forward.
Arsenal have a great chance to win some trophies this year. I hope that injuries do not once again get in the way.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I wholly disagree with your assessment of Eduardo, yes he’s not a like for like replacement for Robin, but then again I challenge you to name a striker that is.
Eduardo gives us a different dimension to our play and while I’m not saying he’s better than robin he can score with any part of his body, from anywhere in the box with his first touch, much more so than Van Persie who relies upon his sublime first touch to set the ball up for a shot.
With Vela and Walcott set to resume training this week, we will be an unkown quantity for teams as they’ll have no way of gauging how we’ll play as our game will no doubt have to be modified to accomodate players with different attributes.
Lets not forget our midfielders and defenders are getting lots of goals and if you look at the goal and assist distribution we’re not short on goals.
Lets just hope we can adapt quickly to this situation.
Desmond, good point on Vera beginning training this week. I had totally forgotten about him returning.
I agree with you that Fabregas and Arshavin will have to pick up some of the goal scoring slack from the RVP injury
Eduardo is the purest goal scorer Arsenal have….And, so what are we going to do do because of Van Persie. First, I would think an injury to Van Persie so early in a Friendly match would have to be calculated. I would look at this thoroughly. Impacts for Italy if Van Persie were out and specifically how it benefits Juventus. It also calls into question Holland and thier willingness in a friendly to expose key players leading up to the WC. Why not give players who don’t normally play a chance?
So how does Arsenal cope? Well simple we have many players that can step it up. Vela, Nasri, Walcott, Arshavin….Van Persie Just started to play in form…We can cope in fact this is tremendous for guys like Eduardo who in my opinion is the best pound for pound forward in the world.
Interesting comments about Italy and Juventus. I know that Jose Mourinho warned Wesley Sneijder not to play in the friendly against Italy because he was worried that a Juventus player would injury him