Mikel Merino says Arsenal won’t use injuries as an excuse for poor results ahead of four away games on the bounce.
Having been relatively fortunate on the fitness front last season – particularly when it came to retaining a stable backline – the opening months of the current campaign have repeatedly made team selection difficult for manager Mikel Arteta.
The absence of captain Martin Odegaard has been keenly felt, while Riccardo Calafiori, Jurrien Timber, and Merino himself have spent time on the sidelines. Those with persistent problems – amongst them Takehiro Tomiyasu, Oleksandr Zinchenko, and Gabriel Jesus -have added to the Gunners’ woes, which have been compounded by three red cards.
By the end of Sunday’s 2-2 draw with Liverpool, the Gunners had a midfielder at right-back, their first-choice right-back partnering their third-choice centre-back in the heart of defence and an 18-year-old at left-back. It wasn’t ideal and Liverpool capitalised to snatch a late draw.
“Injuries are part of the game and they cannot be an excuse for results,” Merino, who scored, told The Guardian.
“Injuries have pros and cons – one of the pros is that we are seeing young players make their debuts and be involved.
“As a club, you want to bring young players through from the academy, give them opportunities and you can see this is a club where everyone is able to do a really good job even though we don’t have important players like Martin [Ødegaard] available.”
Somehow, Arteta has to cobble together a squad for an untimely Carabao Cup fourth-round clash with Preston on Wednesday before attention turns to a daunting trio of games at Newcastle, Inter Milan and Chelsea.
Merino rallied the troops, saying: “The message is simple – this team is not going to lose their focus, it’s never going to give up no matter what the situation or what time of the year it is.
“The focus is to go 100% and learn from every game. We focus only on ourselves and what we can do to win every single game.
“We don’t look outside the team – in spite of this result, we don’t look too far ahead, we focus on the present. This is our mentality and it’s what will bring us success in the future.”
Arsenal is currently third in the table and five points behind Manchester City. If that gap widens by the end of November, any hopes of winning the title may well be extinguished. Merino is right; focus is needed.
That mentality will do wool by him.
no excuses, but we honestly have been able to play our strongest, first choice 11 this season. still 5 points, we have been in worse situations before, we will recover.
Unable I meant to say
The funniest part is when pundits are like, well, champions can overcome such things! ROAR! Except this isn’t the NFL. THERE IS NO PARITY. Anyone who wants to compete with City (and Chelsea for that matter) does so with one arm tied behind their back from the first whistle.
how ironic then that Chelsea have done nothing lately with that extra arm advantage other than to stuff both that arm and their other one up their own anus
Played his best match in an arsenal shirt against the scousers.. technically astute and feisty…was involved in our best phases of play during the dominant period…I noticed he’s sort of like Declan in the ability to keep opposition players pinned into their half…our problem was with insufficient creativity in the final third…. we’ll soon need to swap Gabriel Jesus for a killer in the box…Play Nwaneri earlier please…..
Wise words from an experienced professional. He’ll become such an asset for us.
It’s not the injuries that have cost us this year. Unless the PGMOL stop experimenting on Arsenal, it’s going to be a long old season.
Now I see Jarred Gillett will be VAR for our Newcastle game. Brace yourselves!
Surely the refs can’t top their performance from our last away trip over there…
…surely?!!
Yen: Surely PGMOL can’t top their performance from last season
PMOL: Challenge accepted.
Just waiting for them to start introducing celebrity guest var refs. Your var referee for the evening, Jose Mourinho! Assisting him will be Phil Dowd who’s come out of retirement to have a bit of fun!
dunno, I think having had our captain and best midfielder missing for most of the season so far has also had an effect, as have the injury absences of pretty much every one of our full backs. We’ve been fucked by both international football and PGMOL this season.
Should we just sign every single player named Mikel from now on?
Does that include Jon Obi?
Fun fact, I played a game of futsal against him in 2017 in Denmark and got absolutely demolished so I would say yes