Arsenal News » 2009 » October » 23

Liverpool and Injuries by Jonny Neale

Benitez – “We have just too many problems, I cannot remember an injury situation like this.”

http://www.football365.com/story/0,17033,8652_5641497,00.html

By my reckoning – Liverpool are ‘potentially’ missing 6 players for the next game –

Gerrard, Torres, Johnson, Aquilani, Kelly, Kyrgiakos

Of those, two players wouldn’t normally make the first team anyway (I don’t even know who Kyrgiakos is), one of them they knew was crocked for at least 2 months when they signed him, he hasn’t played since then and Benitez already knew he had a bad injury record historically.

Crucially however, neither of their two best players, who they now seem to rely on entirely (Gerrard & Torres), have actually even been ruled out of playing on Sunday!

So in truth Liverpool are missing ONE player and two are rated as ‘doubtful’!  CRISIS.

Apparently Mascherano could have played on the weekend, but as Liverpool are now so poor that their players are being paid with prayers they could or would not afford to spring for an earlier private plane flight and so flew him home a day later, ‘club class’ instead.  He’s probably just thankful he wasn’t coming back by cargo container.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Portsmouth, Everton and Burnley are missing 5 real players, Man City are missing 6 (of their bloated squad all covered in oil), Man Utd 7, Arsenal 7 and poor old Birmingham are missing 9!

Given that Liverpool have pretty much matched Man Utd on transfer expenditure and yet their squad is clearly thinner than a communion wafer during an international flour shortage, is this feeble whingeing not more to do with distracting from Benitez’s mercurial, ordinary and downright bizarre dealings in the transfer market, coupled with a total lack of quality young players either bought in or brought through the ranks in recent years?

And looking on that brings us to Arsene’s transfer dealings.  How did we get to a point where we can cope with missing so many players and yet still seem to have an unending stream of talent ready to step up to the plate and take their chance?  A squad so awash with talent that it was said in the mid-week fixture that a staggering 17 different players have already scored this season.

It would be nice to keep tabs on those who have yet to score so we can tick them off, but for scorers so far I have only counted 15 – Fabregas, Vermaelen, van Persie, Arshavin, Diaby, Eduardo, Bendtner, Gallas, Watt, Denilson, Walcott, Eboue, Vela, Ramsey, Rosicky.

I digress, and whilst privately I worry about what happens if we lose Vermalaen/Gallas and, perhaps especially Song, I am still mightily amused each time I hear the press describe Arsenal’s current situation as a ’striker crisis’ and yet we still have Vela sat on the bench patiently waiting for a game (a pity he didn’t get more of a chance Tuesday night).

Going beyond Liverpool’s so-called injury crisis to the rather more serious financial problems and the unenviable position the fans and club find themselves as a result is unnecessary; Tony told us all years ago these days would come and now we are on the cusp…they are here to savour.

Perhaps now the irritating morons who spend most of their time slagging Wenger off for ‘ruining their club’ and not buying big names can see just how fragile the spending policy of other clubs is.  Eh?  Eh? Oh.

Well I can dream can’t I?!

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