Arsenal and Mikel Arteta must seize opportunity to prove they have fixed key issue amid fresh injury blow
Now is Arsenal’s time to prove they have corrected one of their big issues from last season.
Arsenal are going to have to prove they have fixed one of the issues that popped up last season after a fresh injury blow. The Gunners learned this week that they will have to do without star man Martin Odegaard for around a month.
BBC Sport have reported that Arsena are expecting Odegaard to remain sidelined with his knee injury until mid-September. The report does not give details of the injury, but it’s claimed Odegaard will be absent until after the next international break after picking up the knee issue on October 4.
Arsenal struggled without Odegaard during his absence with a knee injury last season, and it’s an issue they knew they needed to address in the summer. The Gunners coped fine in the Champions League, but in the Premier League, they won only four of the eight games he missed during the season, losing twice in the initial stretch of seven games. In fact, the two defeats came within three games, against Bournemouth and Newcastle.
The Gunners only lost four games all season, and there were no two losses as close together as the two suffered in the absence of Odegaard. Mikel Arteta tried a couple of solutions, with Leandro Trossard and Mikel Merino playing in the number 10 role, but the conclusion come the summer was that Arsenal needed more depth at the position.
As much as £60million was committed to Eberechi Eze’s signing as a result and, in theory, Arsenal now have a ready-made replacement for Odegaard that will ensure they are better equipped for the Norwegian’s absence.
But the proof needs to be in the pudding, and Arsenal and Eze are going to have to prove they can cope with the absence of arguably their most influential player. The Gunners face Fulham, Crystal Palace, Burnley and Sunderland in the Premier League between now and mid-November, also taking on Atletico Madrid and Slavia Praha in the Champions League and Brighton in the Carabao Cup.
Those are not overly tricky fixtures, and so it should be a soft landing for Eze and the Gunners, but no adjustment is easy for a team as fine-tuned as Arsenal, and if they can prove to themselves that they can survive without one of their best players, it would be a monumental confidence boost one season on from making too many excuses about injuries last season.
Now it’s over to Eze to get it done, and if he doesn’t, it’ll be over to Merino or Trossard to step up again.
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