Arsene Wenger has provided an update on the knee injury sustained by Per Mertesacker and it’s bad news as the German is set to miss ‘a few months’.
Details are a bit unclear right now, but it must have been something that happened during training, and quite what ‘a few months’ means is anybody’s guess, especially when it comes to this club.
It’s a blow for Arsenal, despite the fact they have signed 20 year old central defender Rob Holding from Bolton.
Laurent Koscielny will be returning late from his summer holidays having gone all the way to the final with France, while Gabriel is currently sidelined with tonsillitis but should recover in time for the start of the season.
If there is a positive – and we’re definitely not saying this is a blessing in disguise or anything stupid like that – there’s still plenty of time for the club to react in the transfer market.
Wenger said at tonight’s press conference that they would have to ‘look at other options’, and there have already been links to Napoli’s Kalidou Koulibaly. Perhaps that’s somewhere we might look again.
We’ll update here if and when we have more details about the BFG but for now just wish him a speedy recovery.
Mr Chambers, your time is now. COYG
Fuck my lifeeeeee..!!!!
Starting to hate this season before a ball has even been kicked.
I might fuck this whole football thing off for awhile, and get into canoeing or something like that..
FFS – cursed.
So there goes any hopes of Arsene paying big money for a Lacazette and/or Mahrez…
Didn’t look like happening anyway – but he will likely have to switch to emergency cover mode now.
Debuchy will play as CB. He once did it very well.
Yes, because adding a CB to the list of requirements means you can’t buy the others on the list.
Yes, because we all know how eager Wenger and the board are to splash the cash
Are you aware at all how Wenger operates? If we have to spend significant time/money on a centre half now, guarantee that makes other moves less likely. Not impossible, but more likely of the bargain variety, and much less likely to go in for expensive moves for BOTH a wide forward and a striker. Would love to be proven wrong.
Gutted for the player… Though, not a big fan of his…
And, this could be blessing in disguise for us… Go get Koulibally (could be wrong… The spelling)
We can chant “Go Get [insert player]!” all we like, but here’s what we’ll be hearing in September when the question comes up about our not having bought a CB: “Don’t forget we already have Chambers, and Monreal can play there as well. Holding, too, is ready.”
It’s…Groundhog Day!
The Arsenal Captain Curse strikes again!!!!
You do realise it’s been the Arsenal Captain Injury Blessing the last two seasons ? I dread to think where we’d be if Arteta had not got injured. A hell of a lot worse off.
And here comes the outrage…….
Just… But… *sighs in resignation*
His game would’ve likely not deteriorated so fast and he’d have maintained his ability to dictate the tempo of games and be an effective intercepter/ counter-attack starter. Not that that’s exactly what we could’ve done with last year..
So we would have been better off over the last season and a half if Arteta had stayed fit & Coq had seen out his loan at Charlton and then left on a free ?
Ok then……
More outrage……
If you read what I said I was referring to last season. Coquelin made his breakthrough year before.
Ending your comments with ‘outrage…….’ isn’t that funny. I’m so excited about Xhaka as I agree that we’ve not had enough in centre mid the last few (ten) years, but last season we could’ve seriously used an in-form Arteta. Common sense.
Let’s hope this forces Arsene’s hand now at least.
Can’t see that he’ll buy though as that’ll stop the new boy and Chambers ‘progress’?? They are there for this exact purpose, to step up when injurys hit the first team. We have 3 first team CBs, 4 would be a bit weird considering the 2 youngsters who will need 1st team experience.??
Would like to upvote this more than once. Assuming kos misses 1 week, we still have kos, gabriel, chambers, and holding. That looks pretty deep.
At least, much more so than our current striker pool, which consists of giroud and Walcott.
We should still be prioritizing the striker position.
We also have Nacho who can fill in there at a pinch
I’m expecting a CB signing in the Kim Kallstrom mould. I honestly have no confidence in Arsene’s Transfer Market activity anymore. He’s an economist of sorts and wants value, but smaller clubs able to get better value out of their “bargains”. I’ll give examples. We were clamoring for a physical presence in the midfield since 3-4 seasons now. Cheikhou Kouyate to West Ham for 5 Mil GBP(2014). Strong box-to-box runner, scores a decent bit too. I rate him higher than El-Neny. We could’ve used cover for Koscielny when we played through his achilles heel injury for close to 6 months!… Read more »
Are you actually aware how the squad looked three years ago and how it looks now? Do you realize that, effectively, the past winter and this summer we’ve replaced Flamini and Arteta with Elneny and Xhaka?
Tell me you did not just suggest we should sign Marko Arnautovic.
With this injury and no more additions, our team for the first game looks like
Cech
Bellerin Gabriel Chambers Nacho
Xhaka Cazorla
Ox Wilshere Iwobi
Walcott
Light at the back and the front. I really hope Campbell gets a go ahead of Walcott. But knowing Wenger, this will be the most probable lineup. Please Alexis, be fit for the first game!
Is Mexes available?
Yep, and so are Hatem Trabelsi and Sebastien Frey. Ah, the good old transfer rumour mill of yore…
Don’t forget Christopher Samba
with heskey up front…………….
Jesus. Hatem Trabelsi. Rolling back the years on that one
What bad news. I guess we hope one of the youngsters can seize this moment to step up and grab their chance? Heal fast Per!
Wow, no need for nazi references, just because he’s German.
“seize this moment”, not seize czechoslovakia
“Heal Per” was what I was going for, but such is life.
Our new signings should be settling into the team on this American tour!!
What’s the point of fucking pre season fixtures if it isn’t to bed in new players and get a solid pattern of play!!!
Instead a trolley dash after the season starts.
Rubbish.
?
27 July: Arsene makes John Terry Arsenal Captain.
28 July: outrage amount arsenal fan base
29 July: John Terry gets deported to Saturn
#UseTheCurse
We should buy Christopher Samba or Scott Dann. One of those will surely make us ready to fight for the title again!
Throw in Christian Zapata and you have a deal
Plus finally securing Kalou and we’ve got ourselves a transfer gossip dream team.
Because they’re tall!
FFS, and so it begins…
So we have Chambers, Holding and Gabriel as options for the first game of the season. If we truly are in for Koulibaly/Mustafi, where does this leave Chambers in the long run? He needs gametime and I would be against keeping him as second choice RB.
I
Crap
SMEG! What is it with captains and injuries? I’d suggest maybe just not having a captain, but then probably everyone in the whole squad would be injured for a year and we’d have to forfeit the entire season.
Keep dropping bids on Manolas until Roma accept one.
We clearly don’t have any sort of plan, anything we do will be opportunistic or through desperation and that’s If we do anything at all.
We’re either really bad at doing deals? Or we don’t actually have any intention of improving our team in a hurry?
At least we’ve fixed the centre of midfield, thats only taken us 12years.
I reckon by 2035 we’ll have signed a top striker from somewhere, heads up.
just spend the money arsene. ffs. mourinho comes out and says that he wants the title in his first year at man united and he’s making all the moves to get the fans on his side. we watch arsene twiddle his thumbs waiting for the next ozil to fall on his lap. would vardy have said no to pep if he was managing arsenal…not a chance. would miki have said no…not a chance. instead, vardy stayed at Leicester and miki went to man united where he doesn’t even get champions league football. if i was a player looking for a… Read more »
You’re right on a couple of things, but suggesting Vardy would have left Leicester if we had a more “ambitious” manager certainly isn’t one of them.
Spot on honest opinion
Who gives a rats arse how much Koulibaly costs, just fork out the asking price. He’s top quality and will form the best defensive partnership in the league with Koscielny.
We have 11 players injured or on holiday for the first game of the season.
And Chambers/Holding become the Adams/Bould of this generation…
One can only dream.
Well we can now at least offer beneath the release clause for defenders now and act amazed when our offers get rejected
I think Arsene just likes to mess with the other managers
The control freak needs to fuck off
We’re a huge club being micro managed by a man way past his best who unfortunately isn’t held to account by anyone
We bid €35M for Lacazette after Lyon already declined a €40M bid from West Ham, meanwhile Napoli get Milik for €35M? Now Per is out til Christmas (presumably) this club is in shambles and it breaks my heart. It’s not even August yet and I feel like the season is over. ?? (I’m not one of those everything is shit people, honest, but this just all hurts)
Hello darkness my old friend…
Hey…
Only Arsenal can be in injury crisis mode, before the season has actually started!
Napoli just lost higuain, we could of had him for a third of that, so they will fight tooth and nail to keep koubilay. If he goes he’s expensive and we don’t play that high
“..we could of (=HAVE) had him for a third of that …”
The source of your information please?
Are you new to arsenal transfer dealings? When he left Madrid for napoli. We baulked at the fee then
Not surprising really after the embarrassing +£1 bid for suarez
The release clause for Suarez everyone believed was 40m. Are you the nut who pays $100 for a $1 chocolate bar?
What an ass.
To be honest, I don’t see why you wouldn’t bid £40,000,000.01. Waste of 99 perfectly good p.
Seriously though, why would you waste £1m if the release clause was anything in excess of £40m? That would be embarrasing.
The season starts. Our Euro participants are not fit. Other important players are injured. In the unlikely case where we sign established players to fill the holes (hahaha, who am I kidding), they are not used to the PL, and they have no chemistry with each other, because we signed them too late. We lose/draw the first few games. Once we get going we are too far behind to hope for any chance of getting the title. You know this scenario is highly probable.
He won’t buy anyone he is a muppet. Same story for 10 years. Arseblog could re run his posts verbatim just changing names of key targets that we miss out on. Wenger and gazidis quotes would be literally word for word the same.
The season hasn’t even started and we have a crisis in our backline already.
I think he’ll go for ‘internal solution’.
Everyone knows we need a CF and CB + Wenger’s transfer market tactics = A poor start to the season
Oh my – isn’t it all just doom and gloom? And the season hasn’t begun yet.
Some people just have to have their Apocalypse Now.
“The horror, the horror.”
Or how about Buddy Holly:
“Oh misery, misery.
What’s going to become of me …”
In the midst of the worry about things Arsenal generally at the moment, it’s easy to forget what bad news this is in isolation. Putting aside the problems we have with our squad for the start of the season with players injured/returning late, just to be without Mertesacker’s calmness and organisation on the pitch is gonna be a huge miss (anyone remember how shaky we looked last year with the Gabriel/Koscielny pairing?). Not meaning to come across condescending, but a lot of Arsenal fans really don’t appreciate what an important player he is for us. We simply don’t have another… Read more »
The Higuain to Juve deal is a bit of poetic justice. When we were after him from RM, Napoli sold Cavani for silly money to PSG and gazzumped us with the proceeds. Now Juve look like they’re going to sell Pogba for equally silly money and are using the proceeds to poach Napoli’s man. Serie A is beginning to look like the Bundesliga. Wenger doesn’t pay over the odds, thank goodness, because he doesn’t have a bottomless pit of cash. If he bought all the players people are advocating he should, for the prices they’re being quoted at, AFC would… Read more »
See you in 2017, mert. We should be 10-15 points off the pace by then!
That’s right. And well primed for a plucky charge to 4th place!
Sorry; but isn’t this a good time to blood the likes of Callum Chambers? I mean what is the point in this project if we don’t try to implement the fucking thing when the need arises. Sorry mt 2 cents blogs.
For a moment there I thought we had an injury without any competitive action, realised must have been intensive training on remaining static defending corners. Being completely motionless for long periods can impact your knees
And that, as much as anything else, led to my drinking problem.
And so it begins…..it doesn’t even matter who we sign – they will probably rupture a cruciate just stepping off the bus on the way back from Colney..
Right when his movie came out. Gabriel probably crunched him.
Hahahahaha! We all know he’ll sign no-one.
Hahahahaha! We all know he’ll point towards our young emerging talent: Chambers & holding.
Hahahahaha! We all know he’ll say monreal & debuchy can play in that position, so we’ll have cover.
If that’s the laugh of madness, I can definitely relate. Hahahahahahaha! [weeping]
Arsenal season seems to be starting early nowadays. Injury first and game later.
Quick survey: Do you think Arsene Wenger will:
A. Bite the bullet and act like mega clubs do and go out and buy a senior centre half immediately.
B. Keep the money in the bank and instead rush Koscielny back early leading to him getting injured and Rob Holding having to be thrown in the deep end like Chambers and countless others.
B
Throw buckets of cash at Manolas, Mahrez, J. Hernandez. Flog Walcott, Campbell, Debuchy, one of the keepers. Job done.
Do we make this more complicated for ourselves or am I just a drooling simpleton? The two are not mutually exclusive I suppose.
Campbell? Really?
Yeah. Nice lad, who has played reasonably well at times. Personally I think he’s just short of the required quality for that position however. And if selling him helps fund a move for significantly better player, then the club just need to be ruthless and do it.
Gutted for the BFG, wish him a good recovery that doesn’t spell the end of his Arsenal career.
Though, it’s an amazing opportunity to have Walcott named captain so he can follow Vermaelen and Cesc. Use the curse!
any other “top club” would absolutly go out and brought a capable CB asap, still any other “top club” would have bought the striker couple of seasons back.