This goes to prove that we have never fielded a completely healthy, top class starting 11, with top substitutes more than 2-3 games in a row over the last 4-5 years. We have either led or been close on the heels of the leaders in this league and YET:

1)We are 3 points behind Manure with a game in hand,
2) We made it to the knockout round for the 12th time,in the CL
3) We are still in the FA cup
4) We came within a whisker of winning the CC
5) We are financially solvent and have enormous talents coming up next season,
6) 6 of our starting 11 are not performing up to their potential on a consistent basis – Bendtner, Chamakh, Cesc, Arshavin, Walcott, Nasri, and 3 of our top substitutes are bottling it regularly – Rosicky, Diaby, Eboue,
7) We have been playing 3 games per week since January…an exhausting run and it has taken its toll.

Manure and Cheatski have fallen off form more than anytime this season and it is our golden opportunity to finally win an EPL title and/or the FA Cup. If Wenger can bring in an emergency replacement for Szceznsy and If Almunia can duplicate his excellent form he showed against Barcam but week in and week out in the EPL and FA cup, then we have a chance. With the likelihood of Vermaelen being out for the rest of the season and Walcott, Cesc, Song, being crocked for a few more weeks, we need all the good fiortune we can get, as we can be sure we’ll not get well treated by the referees.

Can’t help wondering what the reasons are though. Can it really just be bad luck – over at least the last 4-5 years? If we were better at keeping our players fit, just think what we could achieve given what we manage with them leading the injury league table year after year.

Various reasons suggest themselves:
- more bad tackles from other teams than suffered by our rivals because we are ‘too quick for them’. But this could only explain contact injuries.
- more bad tackles suffered than by our rivals because our opponents hate us for all that we represent. But this could only explain contact injuries.
- our players overstretch themselves and don’t ‘listen to their bodies’ enough (training issue?) – only explains things like hamstring injuries.
- our training regime works our players too hard, so adds an avoidable additional burden that exacerbates their already high fatigue levels resulting from the intensity of the EPL and the number of games/competitions that we compete in.
- underuse of our squad through rotation before injuries strike rather than rotating only when injuries have already occurred and changes are forced on us.
- too small a squad.
- physical characteristics of the players that make up our squad. Do we simply prefer small, light, agile players and is it simply an unavoidable consequence that they are more injury prone?
- not enough body conditioning work in our training regimes (maybe because, as mentioned already, we prefer our players agile rather than muscle bound?).
- diagnostic, rehab and injury management team simply not up to scratch.
- diet provided at the club no longer cutting edge (and/or education etc. to keep players eating the right things when not at the club).

Really difficult to belive it’s not one or several of these things. And surely there is a compromise that might keep our players fitter? Ok, so we prefer light athletic players to muscle-bound tanks but we can choose where we are on the scale to achieve a better compromise (Man U don’t suffer as many injuries as us, but they don’t go for the beefcake model either and their players are honed to play proper football rather than push and shove, or devil’s hoofball).

Wish we could improve our injury tally/management as I’m heartily sick of saying every year ‘oh well it surely can’t go on like this for ever’ and then the next season, lo and behold, it’s just as bad….. Like I said – given the exceptional standards we achieve despite our rotten injury record, what could we achieve if fit?