Arsenal could be without Ben White for some time, with the defender said to have undergone surgery as the international break begins.
A knee injury forced White to miss recent games against Paris Saint-Germain, Leicester and Southampton, while was not fit to start in the 1-0 defeat at Newcastle, and pushed through the discomfort to play at centre-back against Liverpool with William Saliba suspended and fellow defenders Riccardo Calafiori and Takehiro Tomiyasu sidelined.
Now, James Benge and Charles Watts report that White has undergone a minor procedure to ease a joint issue that he has been carrying.
Ben White has undergone a minor procedure to ease a joint issue he has been carrying in recent weeks. The 27 year old has been playing through the pain in recent weeks, missing the EFL Cup tie against Bolton and playing just 19 minutes against Newcastle.
— James Benge (@jamesbenge) November 13, 2024
Arsenal signed Calafiori in the summer and added the returning Jurrien Timber to the defensive ranks, though there has still been an issue with depth at the back due to injuries suffered by Calafiori and Tomiyasu. The latter is yet to feature this season.
There is no indication on how long White could miss just yet. Arsenal play Nottingham Forest (home), Sporting CP (away), West Ham (away) and Manchester United (home) in the four games immediately after the international break.
This is the problem with Tomiyasu being so unreliable. White has been forced to play so much football injured.
We have a small group of players who never play consistently, but are somehow always injured.
I suppose Neto also didn’t help in the last game
Haha. Good thing we didn’t sign him with the current injury crisis. His hamstring will ping reliably once a season.
We did sign Neto, he is our backup keeper.
Net-0
At the elite levels your body has to have incredible resilience, and not all players are built that way. I’m convinced that’s something we’ve looked for specifically when targeting players in the last 2-3 years. Havertz, Rice, Raya, Timber and Merino all came to us as iron men who were basically always fit. We made an exception for Calafiori, I’m guessing because there was so much to like and his injuries (since his big injury) were random. With Zinchenko there is a consistent issue with a recurring calf problem since 22/23. When I see that, it’s a real worry becuase… Read more »
We have Kiwior.
Kiwior to play at right back? I don’t ever want to see him at LB nevermind RB.
Not sure why. The best we’ve looked over the last 2 seasons was with him at LB. He had one bad game against Fulham and one against Bayern where he was up against Leroy Sane and given a hospital pass by Gabriel. Otherwise he was solid in the position, if unspectacular.
The mystery injury is Calafiori, who they’ve been quite vague about. If he comes back we have Timber on the right and all is fine (for now).
Solid payer for us, let’s hope it’s a very short time before he comes back. Injuries have been our problem for the last two seasons, costing us two titles, and haven’t been great this season.
Fingers crossed.
Can’t be: “Oh, injuries, we won’t win the league. Hopefully next year, we will not have injuries.”
How did injuries cost us last season?
They didn’t. We were remarkably lucky with injuries last season.
If you ignore the lengthy absences for Timber, Jesus, Tomiyasu and ESR. I take your point but our squad depth took a hit last year, which will have impacted the starters.
It makes sense given that Calafiori, Tomiyasu and even Tierney are expected to be back after the interlull.
Although, I do wonder if he couldn’t get it done after the end of last season. It seems to be the injury he was playing though during the 2023-2024 season.
Anyway, wish him best recovery!
You can actually see Tierney getting a game at the rate we’re losing players.
Surgeries (especially certain types of knee surgeries) are not guaranteed to be successful. Often the doctor recommends rehab to avoid slicing you up. Easy to say it was a mistake in hindsight.
Good to know !
Never said it was a mistake from the staff, they are far more qualified than me to make such decision 😉
Tough as nails. He’s an absolute favourite playing through i jury and pain.
Come back soon but not to soon 🤘
Hopefully not out too long but at least with Calafiori hopefully back after the break then we have the depth to cover. Calafiori – Gabriel – Saliba – Timber is a fantastic backline.
Timber to RB and hopefully Calafiori to LB and keep TP in midfield 🤞
Yes, this would be the next ideal senario.
Especially since Timber is a natural RB/RCB and is sub-optimal stuck out left.
This has been our main issue I feel. Instability in the back line of players in and out, just plain out or carrying an injury and playing on.
How many different combinations have we played at the back, with Partey dropping into RB alot too meant we had to play other players out of position/caused a ripple effect.
Hopefully this is now with the view Calafiori is close and will be back after the Intl break and Zinny is fit too. so we have two options on the left, with Timber to play RB.
we cannot catch a break
this is starting to feel like the season from hell… just one injury after the other. Even if most of them are fairly minor, it just disrupts any sort of build-up of form and chemistry and consistency and it’s enough that we’re almost always 3-4 players short of our best 11. To be fair we enjoyed a rather splendid run of health from our best players last season and (apart from the Saliba injury) the one before, unfortunately now we’re suffering from the regression to the mean… the normal injury rate for a football club is probably right in the… Read more »
Timber basically missed the entire season last year. Tomiyasu missed a lot of time as well. Smith Rowe was injured and/or trying to get up to speed from injury for a long time, as was Gabriel Jesus.
This is what I thought might happen eventually. He was playing through the injury and it sounds like the procedure was minor. At a guess, arthroscopic knee surgery with debriedment of the meniscus. Meniscal damage would be consistent with his course of being able to play sometimes but not consistently. I’m guessing of course. I had arthtroscopic meniscus debriedment myself in the aftermath of an ACL repair. I was basically back to running in a couple of weeks, able to plant and cut hard within a month for sure. He’s a better athlete than me with an expert team so… Read more »
Plus, you weren’t playing in the PL. Or are you one of those playing in the league that we don’t see anymore?
He will be a massive miss if he’s out for a long time. Fingers crossed it’s a couple of weeks and he can be back for Man Utd! He’s been an absolute warrior playing through most of last season injured and the start of this season. We love him! Hopefully Timber can stay consistently fit and play RB and we can play Lewis-Skelly at LB and rotate him with Zinchenko/Kiwior until Calafiori is back.
That’s the thing about injuries. They have a cascading effect across the squad, best exemplified in the Liverpool game.
8 weeks qouted I think. +or- 2 so realistically January. But califoiri back after interlul
partey was in a similar situation 2 years ago. soon after the summer transfer window closed, elneny tore his acl. partey had to play every game until the world cup as arsenal had no one else capable of playing cdm. when partey got to qatar, he could barely walk; ghana nearly ruled him out. jesus, who was also struggling, was eventually dropped during the world cup. arsenal were able to bring in jorginho during the january window but the damage partey suffered was significant; we barely saw partey last season. hopefully ben white is in a better predicament; arsenal hasn’t… Read more »
Looks like Partey might have to cover RB if the other injured players are not available. Not ideal, but again, nothing has been going for us this season.
Tomiyasu did come on for a cameo this season, though can’t remember where..
He did get on the bus for a pre season game, straight to the bench though.
So then, have lost title from positions of advantage with losses to west ham, villa, fulham, newcastle when all players fit. Tomiyasu is offical a sicknotte but cant blame hia desire and heart to do well for the club. Is it u fprtunate we find ourselves in this state. Has Mikel relied to much on certain players, overplayed them and it has backfired? Is our medical team a shambles? To which degree can we xlassify all this as unfortunate vs mismanagement/poor choices -decisions. Is it not better to come out strong in first 20 minutes and try score 3 fh… Read more »