http://www.theguardian.com/football...-injuries-theory-arsene-wenger-alexis-sanchez Thoughts? Made for interesting reading. Arsenals constant injury woes every season have always fascinated me.
The theory it's self - small players getting injured more, seems ridiculous as I'm sure there are a lot of examples of small players who aren't injury prone out there. Also one of the examples of the big players in our team - Giroud has had a lot of injuries since he signed for us. Also not all our injuries are doing to muscle strains - look at Diaby he had broken bones, muscle strains, groin strains, hamstrings, ligament damage - everything bar a limb falling off! And while Walcott has had a lot of muscular problems, Wilshere has had a lot of bone/fracture issues. Whenever we have a spate of broken bones/ankle injuries in the team a theory is put forward that we take too many big impacts because we are standing still taking the ball. Whenever we have a spate of muscular injuries a theory is put forward that we are stretching too much, or that we are too little and making too many intricate movements and that is responsible for these injuries. I've even heard it said that we move too much! This level of injuries is highly damaging and hugely frustrating but there must be a multiude of causes as there are so many different types of injuries being suffered by so many different players, and not only injury prone players like Rosiky, Wilshere and Walcott. Look at Ozil and Vermaelen - barely ever injured before they signed for us - now Ozil (I think I heard this stat) has missed more games through injury for us then during his whole time at Real, while Vermaelen missed a whole season injured for us and was still injured when we sold him to Barca!
I think the 'small players' theory was a deliberate pun on the fact that nobody really has any 'evidence' of why. But you would have to say that our relatively small squad and lack of rotation has an impact. Our key players play too much, get injured, get rushed back and the cycle continues
But then our key players don't play anywhere near as much as Chelsea played their players last season - Terry played every league game and the majority of European games, their defence was barely rotated and Costa, Hazard, Fabergas and Matic played the majority of games as well - yet none of them are breaking down injured this season (Costa excepted - obviously he had recurring injuries last season).
Here are some interesting stats from another article that colors the Arsenal injury crisis in a different light. - Injuries during the 2015-16 season in the Premier League show Arsenal to be seventh in the division with 24, which is only slightly above the league average (20.5), while their total is well behind the likes of Man City (35), Man United (31) and even Liverpool (25) who are also in the race for the top spot. Their key players have suffered recently and they will be without four of Wenger's 10 outfield starters (Alexis Sanchez, Francis Coquelin, Santi Cazorla and Theo Walcott) this weekend. - Out of those 24 injuries, only 11 have lasted 10 or more days, which represents less than half of their total (46 percent.) Again, this falls well below their Premier League rivals -- Man City on 20 (57 percent), Tottenham 16 (72 percent) and Liverpool 18 (76 percent). In fact only a handful of teams have a better record -- Leicester, Norwich, Southampton, Swansea, and West Brom. - The total days missed this season also tells a story. At a meagre 312 days,Arsenal fall way below the Premier League average (369.6) and when directly compared to Man City (546), Liverpool (656) and Spurs (520). Even Chelsea have suffered more cumulatively days (314) with players out. Source: http://www.espnfc.us/barclays-premi...wer-injures-than-man-city-united-or-liverpool
Has he? I thought he was relatively robust, weird broken foot aside. Some knob-heads would wish he were injured more but I don't think it's actually the case. In fact, some of his problems in front of goal have been caused by fatigue!
