Will Arsenal’s international injury crisis spill over into the club season?

WFor the sake of foresight, Mikel Arteta’s answer to a question before Arsenal’s win over Everton last month about how the upcoming international break could affect his team was revealing. “We have a very good conversation with most of them,” Arteta replied when asked if he planned to speak to the various international managers who were expected to call up his players. We will wait and see how everyone is doing, have those discussions and make the right decisions.

Considering Arsenal were chasing an unprecedented four at the time, was this the scariest thing he’d ever felt on an international break? “It’s a time I don’t enjoy very much,” admitted Arteta. “Especially when we play 18, 19 players. Especially with what happened in our recent history with very important players. But it’s part of the calendar and we have to accept that.”

After Arsenal’s defeat against Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final at Wembley, it didn’t take long for the resignation to begin. First William Saliba pulled out of the France squad with a left ankle injury despite playing the entire game at Wembley and was quickly followed by Jurriën Timber, who was struggling with a groin problem and was not part of the squad for the game against City.

In the next 24 hours, Gabriel Magalhães – who was at the forefront of Arteta’s mind when he spoke of “our recent history” after the defender picked up a hamstring injury in Senegal’s excellent game at the Emirates in November that ruled him out until the new year – withdrew from the Brazil squad as Leandro Trossard did the same in Belgium. Eberechi Eze was also forced to withdraw from England duty due to a calf problem that ruled him out of the Carabao Cup.

Arsenal had hoped captain Martin Ødegaard – who missed a large part of last season after suffering an ankle injury on international duty – could return against City after a lingering knee problem, but he did not appear and was subsequently withdrawn from the Norwegian squad.

Arteta’s efforts to protect his players as they prepare for a tough game that will define Arsenal’s campaign have drawn comparisons to the Sir Alex Ferguson era at Manchester United. He famously described internationals as a “waste of time” and Wayne Rooney revealed last year that Ferguson insisted his players produce “more than 45 minutes”.

However Arteta’s worst fears appeared to come true last Friday evening when Noni Madueke and Piero Hincapié both pulled out of their England and Ecuador friendlies. Madueke was seen leaving Wembley on his knees as Hincapié had to assess the extent of the hamstring injury. Both are expected to be ruled out of Saturday evening’s trip to face Southampton in the FA Cup but Arsenal are confident they can return sooner rather than later.

Due to the negative reaction to the large number of withdrawals from fans of other rival clubs, all eyes will be on how many internationals this weekend will play at St Mary’s. Thomas Tuchel was adamant that Bukayo Saka – another with a history of injury on international duty – and Declan Rice had genuine issues and “desperately wanted to play to set the record straight” after being given the first week out of England’s training camp. The reality is their incredible work for club and country over the past three seasons as the previous World Cup means both could be rested for a long time ahead of next week’s Champions League quarter-final first leg against Sporting Lisbon in Portugal.

The same can be said for Martín Zubimendi, who became Arsenal’s 11th player to withdraw from international duty on Monday due to “pain in his left knee”. The Spaniard has played more minutes than any other Arsenal player in the Premier League this season, just edging out Rice and Timber. Arteta has so far proved reluctant to allow Christian Nørgaard to stand in for Zubimendi in the biggest games of all time, with the Denmark international’s second place in their World Cup play-off against the Czech Republic on penalties starting in the top flight since joining from Brentford last summer.

At least no one could accuse Viktor Gyökeres of not being committed to Sweden. His hat-trick against Ukraine set up a play-off against Poland and the £64m player got the Solna back-to-back which should give him confidence in time for what lies ahead. On the other hand, Riccardo Calafiori will return to north London after playing 120 minutes in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s victory over Italy’s shock third World Cup qualification failure.

Having already played 50 games in the marathon season and with 15 more to come if they reach the FA Cup and Champions League finals, it will continue to be a difficult balancing act for Arteta despite having one of the deepest squads ever assembled in the Premier League. As they deal with the mental anguish of losing their first trophy since 2020 against their closest rivals in the title race, you’ll hope Arsenal are ready to hit the ground running.