Gallas’s Injury “back at starting point”

Arsenal's Physios At Work

Well, this isn’t good.

Apparently William Gallas’s calf is not only still injured, but apparently he was approved to start running again, and immediately reaggravated the injury. According to Wenger:

Gallas has been out for a month and now he has had a recurrence of his calf injury. He felt very well yesterday and went out but he has gone backwards again. We are at the starting point with Gallas unfortunately.

At the beginning it was a minor injury. We don’t know how long it will be now. He had a scan on Monday and we will assess it from there but for Hull, for example, he has no chance.

We were impatient with him and we pushed him and he wanted to get on as well, that is why maybe it has happened. But there is no obvious sign as to why it keeps coming back. He has no pain at all, then goes for a little jog and then it goes again.

First off, this is a pretty big blow to Arsenal’s chances of winning a trophy. Gallas has been out for about a month already, and now he’s apparently back to square one. Which means he’s out for at least another month, probably more. I doubt we’ll see him before mid to late April, and there’s a chance he may be out for the season. And given his contract status, I think we may have seen Gallas’s last match in an Arsenal uniform. I hope not, but I think we’ve got to at least face that possibility.

But it also brings up something we’ve been talking about for a while, and that is the question of why Arsenal players suffer so many more injuries than players from other top sides. Obviously, we’ve had our fair share of serious injuries — the breaks/dislocations suffered by Diaby, Eduardo, Nasri, van Persie, and Ramsey. Those are pretty much unavoidable.

But the constant niggling muscle injuries seem to be what really hits Arsenal worse than other sides. Cesc has had to leave I believe 4 matches this year with hamstring issues. But it’s really rampant — honestly, other than Vermaelen, I can’t think of a single outfield Gunner who hasn’t had muscular injury problems this season. Obviously, this is football, and it’s extraordinarily physically demanding game. And sometimes teams do just get snakebit, where it seems like nothing can go right, injury-wise.

But when everyone is getting hurt, season after season, I think you really have to take a look at how you operate things. I’m far from an expert, but I think it’s very clear that something about how Arsenal is running things is just not working. I’m not sure whether Arsenal is training too hard (or maybe not hard enough), whether we’re getting the wrong kind of players, or whether the medical staff is just incompetent.

Arguing in favor of the latter option is that time and again, we’ve seen an Arsenal player cleared to come back only to see them immediately reinjure himself. And that has to be attributed at least in part to the medical staff. “He wanted to play” is no excuse — players (well, except for Adebayor) want to get out there and play. It’s up to the physios to keep the player off the pitch until they are confident he can get back into training/playing without reaggravating the injury. And looking at Arsenal the past couple of years, it’s pretty clear Arsenal’s medical staff haven’t been very good at this part of their jobs.

I’m not a doctor. I don’t know what the answer is. We may need some change in medical personnel, or maybe a change in directive from the club’s management. But the current state of affairs, is not working, and it’s costing us players’ health, points, and possibly trophies.

Some Related Stories:

Category: Arsenal News, Backroom, Injury Report, Rants, William Gallas