Giving the catalogue of injuries suffered by Arsenal players this season is it unreasonable for Arsenal to claim that injuries have been the bane of their current campaign? Some commentators have castigated Wenger for not having the foresight to predict the spate of injuries the gunners have suffered as he knows that these players are injury prone and not having adequate backup is tantamount to negligence.

All teams suffer their fair share of injuries, so it’s up to the manager to manage those injuries through squad rotation and depth. Wenger has to take responsible for not having the squad to cope with those injuries— or does he?

The main problem today is the lack of goals/power from the forwards as a result of van Persie being out, resulting in 3 games without a goal since that injury. So Wenger should have bought a striker when he sold the guy to Man. City. That would have meant at 5 strikers, just like the best teams in the world. Remove the two regular strikers from those teams and compare our paucity to that of other clubs.

Manchester United

• Michael Owen
• Danny Wellbeck
• Federico Macheda

The other north london club

• Crouch
• Pavluchenko
• Dos Santos

Liverpool

• David N’Gog
• Andriy Voronin
• Nabil El Zhar

Chelsea

• Salomon Kalou
• Daniel Sturridge
• Fabio Boroni

Wow a scary collection of talent available to those teams, should they suffer a similar combination of injuries I wonder how much stick they will get for not having adequate backup. Any team in the league would have major problems without 6 of their first 11.

The argument may be that Arsene should know his players are “injury prone”, I don’t buy that. You cannot claim someone in injury prone when they get injured due to bad, late, or over enthusiastic challenges form the opposition. Van Persie didn’t pull a hamstring, or hurt his groin neither did Walcott, Eduardo, Nasri, Djourou or Gibbs.

The goals will come, Eduardo and Vela are good players just like it took van Persie 5 games to get in his groove Eduardo will regain his touch, a year out of the game and an intermittent run of games does not help with sharpness.

The bigger worry is at the back, on the Manchester City showing Silvestre showed just how important it is the Gallas and Vermaelen stay injury free, any of those two getting hurt will be an absolute catastrophe. I am certain that far from buying a new striker in the winter transfer window it is more likely that Arsene will be picking up a new centre back in January.