What Impact will van Persie’s Injury Have?

By: Martin | November 16th, 2009

Well, I just finished gnashing my teeth, rending my clothes, and dropping down to my knees, head thrust upward, yelling “Why, God? Why?!” I think now I can almost think rationally about this.

The big news is that the injury is not quite as bad as it had been first thought. Originally, everyone was reporting 2-3 months, some of the more sensationalist English papers were saying out for the season. But Arsenal have announced that he will be out for approximately 6 weeks. Which means, basically, he’ll be out until the first of the year, and will probably need at least a week or two to get back into game shape.

So the big question is: how much is this going to impact the club? The answer is, I think, complicated–in some ways, a lot, but in other ways, not so much.

First, as is custom, the good news. Arsenal have 11 games between now and January 1. Two of those are the last two Champions League group stage games. You’d have to think we can beat Standard Liege at home without Robbie, which will clinch first place in the group, rendering the match against Olympiakos irrelevant. So those two games aren’t particularly meaningful. One of the matches is a Carling Cup match with Man City (and if he had, he probably would have brought a shiv on the pitch and given Adebayor the old jailhouse how-do-you-do in retaliation for the face stomping, which would have resulted in a suspension until January anyway), which he wouldn’t have played in anyway.

That leaves us with the 8 league games:

11/21–at Sunderland
11/29–Chelsea
12/5–Stoke
12/13–at Liverpool
12/16–at Burnley
12/19–Hull City
12/27–Aston Villa
12/30–at Portsmouth

Obviously, the Chelsea and Liverpool matches are marquee match-ups where van Persie’s absence will really be felt (although it must be said that both those squads have ample injury woes of their own). And Aston Villa will also be a tough match-up, although it is at least at home. But other than that, we have a couple of games which may give us a little trouble (at Burnley, at Sunderland) and three matches we should absolutely win without too much trouble with or without Robbie (at Portsmouth, Hull City, Stoke). In terms of scheduling, then, it could have been a lot worse–his absence will only impact our chances in one out of the four competitions, and the league schedule in his absence is not particularly punishing, so if we band together and play well, we could definitely still be hanging around the top of the table by the time he comes back.

Now, the bad news. I know there were some of you in the comments to the last post who said that you didn’t think we would miss him that much, but I would respectfully disagree. I think he is absolutely essential to the 4-3-3 formation running as well as it has, and I’m not sure there’s any obvious candidate to replace him. He has adapted his game to a kind of hybrid sniper/playmaker which suits the formation perfectly. He is a target man of a sort, but always gets the ball into his feet, and then, once he gets it, has enough skill to control the ball and make a move quickly past the defender, and can pass or shoot with equally deadly effectiveness. This puts defenders trying to mark him in a quandary–they can’t mark him too tight, because he’s capable of turning them and getting the ball behind them with one touch; on the other hand, they can’t play off him, because when he has the ball in space he’s deadly shooting from long range or using a pass to put someone else through. And, of course, he is our main direct kick taker. Honestly, other than Cesc, I’d argue Robbie is probably the least replaceable member of our squad (although Vermaelen may already be close).

Frankly, no one else on the squad really fits that role. If I had to guess, I think we’ll see Eduardo step into that role for the time being, but he doesn’t have the skill set to play that role nearly as well as RvP did. There might be an outside chance we could see Arshavin try to do it, but with his size and lack of positional discipline, it would seem a poor fit. Those are really are only fit strikers at the moment. Other than those two, I think we’ll see one of Rosicky, Nasri, or Eboue fill the other wing/forward role. Theo Walcott and Carlos Vela shouldn’t be out for too much longer, which gives us some more depth up front.

It’ll be hurt, but we knew some major injuries were a-comin’, and, like I said, Chelsea’s hurting just as bad as we are so there’s nothing to do but get out there and keep picking up 3 points until some of our injured start coming back. As the kids in PS 22 say…