Remember Wenger did the same thing with Ozil vs Chelsea last with the crack in his knee. Why play them on when you know they're hurt?
So far they haven't shown much, ever since our injury crisis began, we have won 2, lost 2, drawn 2, we have only taken 1 point from our last 9 in the league, so it doesn't look good at all, we didn't manage to win a single league game in November.
Well the manager seems to think that our squad is good enough, we've got no choice but to wait and see.
Because you didn't have any subs I'd imagine and you needed to score a goal while trying to hold off a very dangerous Norwich side - Hobson's choice really - we could have taken him off, he could still have been out and we could have lost because we would have been down to 10 men, you never know. It's not like there was a great option there...
Didn't that incident with Santi happen in the 1st half, if I remember correctly? Meaning it was all of the 2nd he played on one leg. Anyway this type of thing keeps on happening where AW takes these risks. With Ozil last season, with Sanchez. He knew Alexis needed a rest (he said himself). He knew about the hamstring issue, yet he played him for 90 mins vs Zagreb when we were comfortably in front. And then Santi. He keeps on playing the same 11 freezing out squad players, who then come in when there are injuries and struggle to make an impact because of the lack of match sharpness. Sometimes the changes are wholesale. He needs to learn to mix it up. You can play strong and introduce squad players in bits along the way. Especially knowing the health history of this squad.
This is going to be a really testing period. If we can make it until January up there alongside City then I think we can win the league. But we could quite easily loose ground in the next 2-3 weeks. How we perform over this period is vital. For me the Ox has to start performing. We need him to deliver now - If he can't then TBH i think we should sell him. So far he has failed to deliver any kind of consistency at Arsenal. 3-4 goals a Season with very few assists is nowhere near the level he should be performing at.
Another thing is Liverpool and Spurs are on a wave right now. Any slip ups and we have more problems than just city.
This is something no one really calls him up on. He plays the same 11 to death and then gets surprised why they start falling like flies. But then he comes out with his usual bollocks about having a great squad, but fails to play them. The reality is, he doesn't have enough faith in his own bloody squad.
