Arsenal’s injury problems will come into sharp focus again with the news that Mesut Ozil picked up a knee ligament strain before half-time, yet played the full 90 minutes against Chelsea last weekend.
According to Arsene Wenger, the German felt a ‘crack’ in his knee, but seemed all right and was allowed to continue and play the full game.
In an interview with beIN Sport, the Arsenal manager said, “He had a little problem just before he went out at half-time. He had a little pain with his knee, he felt a crack.
“I said to our physio to keep an eye on him and if there was anything wrong with him, tell me because when you’re 1-0 down, you want to keep your offensive players on the pitch.
“I am deeply shocked. He wasn’t involved in a collision with anybody It was just after making a pass with the outside of his foot that he injured his leg so it’s very hard to believe that you can damage your ligament with just making a simple pass and it’s very difficult to take that he will be out for a while.”
While the decision to leave him on will come under some scrutiny, it’s not the first time that Ozil has played on through injury. Away to Bayern Munich last season in the Champions League, he pulled his hamstring in the first few minutes but continued until half-time resulting in a lengthy absence subsequently.
However, given that Arsenal did have Tomas Rosicky, Lukas Podolski and Joel Campbell on the bench, it does seem odd that they took a risk with a player that the manager seems to view as pivotal. Of course there’s the issue of their relative quality, but when you look at the outcome it’s impossible not to look at it as a bad idea from both sides.
Ozil is expected to be out until mid-December at the earliest.
Hilarious.
In the sickening sense, yes it’s hilarious.. The real worry for me is why Ozil’s injury wasn’t initially detected by the Arsenal medical staff (especially if he felt a “crack”), rather than him being sent off to National team duty only for their medial staff to detect and diagnose the injury. The same thing happened with Koscielny and his achilles problem. They were both obviously cleared to play for their national teams by Arsenal medical staff, only for their nation teams to send them home saying “Umm, they’re actually a bit broken at the moment”. And even the current Rosicky… Read more »
Part of the reason is because the schedule is hectic. They finish a game, they go home, then fly out a bit later, and then they have time for a scan. Although Arsenal should do better to detect injuries I agree, it’s not necessarily reflective on our medical staff that the problem was detected after a game, during an interlull.
I don’t really get the point of you’re trying to make. Yes our schedule is hectic, but so are a lot of other clubs in 4 competitions and they seem to manage with a lot less injuries. Are you saying there’s no time to properly assess players? I don’t buy that at all.. it should be one of the clubs top priorities.
And I disagree with your last sentence, I think the lack of injury management in Ozil’s case is VERY reflective of our medical staff. And it doesn’t reflect well.
In the case of most of our luck this year not getting injuries has nothing to do with detecting them after they have happened. How would proper detection have helped Giroud, Debuchy, Ramsey, Theo, Arteta? Pretty clear they were done and those are the big misses. Kos is negligence in no quality backup to rotate. Yes, chambers, but he’s at RB when he’s not suspended for the foreseeable future. Ozil should have been pulled at half out of caution in my opinion. You cannot rely on how the player says he feels, as when you are up for a match… Read more »
-MPLS I can testify that straining the MCL feels (or can feel) the same as a twisted knee. There is no way to tell unless the physio has a good look at you and the injury is severe enough to feel when you bend the knee side to side or you have a scan. You can do a scan immediately if you’re prepared otherwise you have to get the swelling down first. I would put my house on Ozil and Arsenal having an idea he’s was injured when he went out there but they thought he might as well anyway… Read more »
Sorry, with respect, but if I’m not mistaken, the problem was detected at half-motherfucking-time.
Did I read the article wrong?
Correct. Ozil detected it himself. Our response: Play him the rest of the game and then let him go off to DFB without diagnosing the problem.
Absolutely inexcusable. Our injury record seems to be getting worse, not better.
-Plev… I done the exact same thing playing last year, off balance, tried to play the ball with outside of my foot and half kicked the ball into the floor. Got up, shook it off and finished the match. It was a little sore the next day so I iced it and went to training 3 days later. First time I kicked the ball I knew something was wrong.. My point is, unless you know as a player what you’ve done (I’m not sure this is an injury Ozil’s had before but I would hazard a guess he hasn’t) then… Read more »
2 points here to make: Our medical staff is useless and have been for a number of years. Arsenal fan tv reported arsenal had 800odd injuries since 2002 or so, much more than the average team in the prem. second point – Squad Depth, had AW been clever enough to think, he would be rotating our midfield and stop relying so much on certain players in the team. We need cover for koscielny in defence, cover for arteta flamini in DM, and still another striker if wellbeck gets injured. Again poor management from the top (including AW). Someone needs to… Read more »
Who are the six people that thumbed this down??
Would you like to check their papers and ask where they’ve been the last 48 hours too?
If Arsenal sign Zigic, Frey, and Samba in January, I believe thy can win the Carling Cup.
Crazy stuff, isn’t it! Same thing happened last year against Bayern I think, he pulled his hammy but didn’t know what it felt to have a bad hamstring so played on, and was awful
Or these could all be excuses for the poor showing on the field? Obviously he is injured but if he claims he felt it in the first half then that could be construed as a reasoning for his poor performance.
Is this a joke? lol
Another wrong decision by Wenger. He is getting old and the mistakes are piling up. Almost everyone I know wanted him to take Ozil off but he didn’t. Does he still “know”?
Why the fuck our people down voting this? The player is telling the manager that it looks he is in trouble and Wenger is like”Hey Physios keep an eye on him” What the fuck. Should have immediately made the decision to take him off and sent him for a scan before he aggravates it further. But he didn’t and I feel he has exactly done that. Hope you are happy that are best mid is out for 3 months. What baffles me most is every year we suffer with an injury crisis, but the still the club hasn’t learnt shit… Read more »
Was it a bad decision from Wenger… or from the physios ? It looks like they basically ignored the, and I quote “crack in the knee” (crack, not a small thing), and didn’t give Wenger the needed information. You can all blame Shad or whoever that is, or Wenger, but if the info that comes up to him is wrong or the situation hasn’t been assessed properly…what can he do? Also, Blogs has a theory I agree with about another case, Debuchy. That the guy was also hurt early in the game after a shock, and that maybe his injury… Read more »
Wenger wants and has completet control over team affairs in this club so he is the one accountable. He is the one who decides who stays on the pitch, not the physios. He might listen to them, I sometimes doubt he does like in this case, or they are yay-sayers who licks his arse by telling him what he want’to hear. What is obvious is that both the physios and manager are completely outdated and either needs to educate themselfs in modern football and medicine or Gazidis/Stan needs to grow a pair and sack the lot.
Blind leading the blind….and everyone getting paid royaly for it….Manager, Physio, Player….joke figures.
piling up? he cleared those out to make room for the fa cup. he knows
Now this is just fucking frustrating.
Of course you want to keep your best players on the pitch, but more importantly, you should want to keep your fit players on the pitch. Aaargh!
Ahahahahahahahaha
Truly a comedy of fucking errors
This is the same ligament injury Ox had, right? Does it require surgery?
Speaking from experience, if he only tweaked/strained it, probably (and hopefully) not, just a lot of rest. Just baffling that it happened, I’m not even a physio and I know when my knee is about to snap.
According to what I’ve read, it’s a partial tear of the ACL. As long as it’s not completely torn, then rest and light conditioning will build up more fibre around what’s left of it, until it’s a healthy ACL again. Any projection of when he’ll be back is a sheer guess because everyone is different. If we’re lucky he’ll heal fast. If we’re unlucky, it’ll be well into 2015. I had a similar injury to a ligament in each of my ankles. Both times the doctor told me it’d be a year before I played football again, both times I… Read more »
LCL dammit, not ACL. Need an edit button. Also need to get “ACL” out of my brain, I knew it was LCL and still typed ACL.
“I am deeply shocked” ?! It’s getting a bit hard to take Wenger seriously when he’s on the subject of injuries & squad depth. And why is he so stubborn about substitutions?!
After Giroud, Walcott, and Debuchy- all freak incidents – he shouldn’t be shocked at all, really.
He took off a clearly frustrated Carzola and Jack while leaving Ozil on until the end despite having this information?Bizarre.
Can’t wait to read tomorrow’s Daily Mail article about his strength of character and determination to play through the pain and keep going. Should be a doozie.
It’s like Wenger never learns. We had many options on the bench. Oxlade-Chamberlain would’ve been a good option to bring on. It’s not like Ozil was having a good game so we had to keep him on the pitch. There were several options on the bench – it’s just pure stubbornness from Wenger.
I love Wenger but this just sounds like straight up terrible management!
He could have done his ACL if he got a lateral tackle from the injured side afterwards. Outrageous. That is exactly what happened me but I was playing a next goal wins 5 a side
There’s no way wenger could have subbed him – it wasn’t 70minutes in!
If he knew he had a crack, with that performance he should play atmost 75 mins. Then, why was it the DFB that diagnosed him first, and not his club? Arsene Wenger has done a lot of things in the past correctly, but the past two seasons, I have many points that suggests he’s loosing his grip.
How he was able to continue play after he felt a “crack” I don’t know. I almost shite my pants when I hear that sound and stop immediately. Could have been a week out at most, but same ol’ same ol’.
When you hear a crack, it means you’ve torn something. Would’ve been more than a week but probably less than what will take him now. It was downright negligible from the staff to let him play. After these last few years, how confident should the players be in the decisions the medical staff make?!
If he knew he had a crack, why did he continue playing at all? For all that people seem to want to blame Wenger for this, Ozil’s got to take some responsibility here. Like Dan said, if you hear a snapping sound from within one of your joints, that’s trouser-changing time!
I think this is an example of Wenger’s autonomy going too far. In such a situation, the physio should be the one to make a clear case that it could be serious. A “crack” (usually a “snap”) in anywhere involving the knee is almost always ligaments. I know athletes who tore both ACLs and continued on for almost 2 months before diagnosis, even though it was clear something was really wrong. The fact Wenger is the one saying “keep an eye” when it should be the case that the physio should say “something is wrong, I recommend we should take… Read more »
Sounds like a crock of rubbish. If you tear one ACL it becomes aggravated very quickly. That’s what happened to Paul Gascoigne in the FA Cup final when he was stretchered off, he tried playing on with a torn ACL. Now if someone tears BOTH ACLs, Lord help them. They won’t be able to carry on for two hours, never mind two months.
Go search Khalid Ismail MMA Fighter before you start claiming something is “rubbish”. Double ACL and meniscus.
Part of me thinks wenger was concerned about the public backlash ozil would of got from the haters if he took him off, no doubt twitter would of exploded with the anti ozil crap ‘under performing as usual’. Im worried the media and some arsenal fans are driving one of the worlds best out of arsenal..
A ACL injury from making a simple pass seems odd. Feel like he’s been over played this season with the world cup and the start of the premiership. No idea if this could make such an injury more likely, but feel like AW needs to improve his squad rotation policy so we don’t run great players into the ground. Alex Ferguson, as much as I loath him, was a master at this and imo that’s what won Manchester United all those trophies back when they weren’t shite. Would definitely improve our injury record!
Seems since we lost Gary Lewin we have had these injury problems. His nephew (our current physio) is not up to his standard and should be sacked, along with Wenger for his stupidity in the transfer market and his lack of tactics.
Could you imagine if the injurys we’ve had to our midfield and attack had been in defence?
This is the season Arsene’s luck runs out, 1 striker last year when we had a real shout of the title, 6 defenders this year, defensive midfield still not addressed.
it’s not that I think he’s not good enough, it’s that I don’t think we will ever know how good he is because his beliefs and philosophy’s ( that I admire ) and his indecision in the transfer market will always get in the way of the club progressing.
This is so stupid. No wonder we get so many injured players.
Surely some of the responsibility lies with the player himself. Sterling got lambasted for telling Woy he was “tired”. Yet Ozil played on knowing he wasn’t 100%.
Who is right & who is wrong.
There’s a bit more nuance and grey area to it than that.
As far as I can tell, Ozil told the physios everything they needed to know to get him off the pitch. He is not at fault here. Whether it was Wenger who insisted he plays, is another discussion.
This has to be a fucking joke.
It’s getting harder and harder to take this club seriously. I mean seriously, what the fuck?
It is NOT an ACL injury (what Theo had) It is NOT a PCL injury (what Ox had). It was reported as a LCL – lateral collateral ligament injury, which is on the outer edge of the knee. (Inside knee area) (Outer edge knee area) MCL ACL x PCL LCL The Posterior Cruciate and Anterior Cruciate from a cross-cross pattern inside the knee, with the PCL forming the backside of the cross (posterior – butt). The issue with ACL injuries is that there isn’t a nearby blood flow to support natural healing when it is damaged, so often surgery is… Read more »
Wow. Sounds like you are not a doctor. But fancy sending your CV to London Colney and see what happens? You just might be better than those currently working on the medical staff there.
You couldn’t make it up.
This explains why we are so “unlucky” with injuries.
Arsene is a director of football trying to do a manager’s job.
I thought it was his lateral collateral ligament (LCL). Could be quite bad. With full a full tear there is usually no pain from the ligament. The partial tears hurt like hell, but not always immediately. Much quicker recovery from an isolated LCL tear vs ACL.
Adios Mr Wenger. He is ruining his legacy with these inept managerial decisions like not buying a striker last year, trying to go a whole season with only 6 defenders.
If the player said he felt OK and showed no effect why is the manager to blame? I’m sure players feel a bit of pain quite often but want to play on.
At half time it appeared Ozil has a small injury. It’s quite normal for small pains to go away if you continue playing. Also, many sportsmen play with *minor* injuries under pain-killers, there’s nothing unusual about that, and wait for some break, like the end of the season, to have their injury properly attended too. It sounds like they thought it was a small injury at half time, especially since it didn’t appear to be a contact injury, and allowed him to play on because we were only one goal down. It’s highly unlikely Wenger over-ruled the medical staff in… Read more »
So can you please explain why he played for 90mins?
Since you are so good a wenger apologist.
This proves Arsene has lost it
I am so worried for this club….I just feel something is seriously wrong arsene knows it the club know it but no one has a clue what to do about it…yes they brought in Shad forsyth but to me it seems it has gotten worse But very often when things go wrong and you don’t have a clue the thing to do is go back to basics and do the simple things simply and properly…..I don’t claim to be an expert physio but a team that has loads of injururies will start by not overplaying players…have enough covers….not start off… Read more »
I’m sorry but all these comments are retarded! We get a little fragment of quotation from Wenger and suddenly all of you are doctors, physios and fitness gurus. It’s obviously not as cut and dry as the status quo are making out. Arsenal agent completely retarded, “DURRR his leg just snapped but let’s keep him on” – at the time it obviously wasn’t clear in such a huge game when we needed Özil. I doubt you can usually play on with that type of injury so that could be why. This is so ridiculous people.
Maybe so. However how do you excuse substituting Santi Cazorla instead of a player who admittedly felt a crack in his knee? It’s not like Mesut Ozil was having a world class performance that day, so why risk it? It’s negligence and mismanagement and there is no excuse for it. I want this club to do well, whoever is in charge, but something like this does not reflect well on the club and the way things are done in there.
Open your eyes for God’s sake!…He was played for 90mins, better players on the day were substituted.
*Arsenal aren’t completely retarded
The craziest thing about this to me is that he took off both Wilshere and Cazorla (both were playing far better than Ozil) for Rosicky and Podolski and kept Ozil on despite having a shocker AND having cracked his knee. Bad management on so many different levels, especially as it was essentially surrendering the match.
I want to be at Arsenal as a physiotherapist…..maybe very soon!
Taking Cazorla off for the Ox looked like the wrong decision at the time. Now it looks reckless and inexplicable.
This isnt something new. I am reading a book about Arsene and every year there is this press conference when he says we have so many first team players injured and yet we managed to get results. Every year we have many players injured. Last year he played Ramsey to the floor. Now he doesnt sub Ozil when he is injured and playing below par. someone has to tell arsene that it is fine to have the same starting 11 in every match only if we are participating in 2 competitions. not when we have to play 2 or 3… Read more »
Are you flaming kidding me?! Can we please stop risking the players? This is not exclusive to Arsenal, by the way. Recently we’ve seen a lot of cases like this: Players that should’ve been subbed, but played on. The worst cases were probably Lloris and Kramer with head injuries (neither one could remember a damn thing afterwards).
It’s strange that Wenger, a man who usually thinks very long term, takes such risks for short term gain, especially considering how fragile our squad is. He should be wrapping them in bubble wrap the instant they complain about a niggle.
So let me get this straight. We have Giroud injured for kicking a ball, Debuchy injured for landing on grass, and Özil injured for making a pass. What game are these guys playing again? Something called football?
Absolutely ridiculous. Wenger has made a massive mistake here. One he would regret as far as this season goes.
A case of Weltschmerz for us and schadenfreude for the others
“I said to our physio to keep an eye on him and if there was anything wrong with him, tell me because when you’re 1-0 down, you want to keep your offensive players on the pitch.” They don’t know if he has anything. Özil said he had “a little pain with his knee”. Wenger told the physio to keep an eye on him and inform him if something is wrong. I’m sure this kind of niggle happens all the time and turns out to be nothing. I don’t know wtf Wenger did so wrong here to get this barracking. And… Read more »
“Ozil is injured, I”ll just take off Cazorla instead so he doesn’t get injured” genius!
Sure is a lot of finger pointing going on.
Get well soon, and most importantly get well Mesut!