We are all sad and a bit disheartened about the recent injury to van Persie, the hope that everyone comes back from international duty uninjured has not come to fruition. That another player suffers serious injury while playing another meaningless friendly is unfortunate, but injuries are part an parcel of the game and in reality the possibility of getting hurt in training is no less that it happening in a match friendly or not.

Van Persie suffers another injury during a useless international friendly

The question is how much van Persie’s injury will affect Arsenal’s title ambitions?

The prognosis on Robin van Persie torn ankle ligaments ranges from 4 weeks if you believe the Dutch medical team, to the rest of the season for those more inclined to believe the sun’s sport medicine experts. The truth is that no one really knows yet, however for the sake of this post let’s assume RVP will be out for 8 weeks, which is more than the rather optimistic Dutch estimate and includes extra time to regain some match fitness.

Before we jump to judgement as to how much it will affect the Arsenal lest list the upcoming fixtures up to January 9th.

Fixtures up to Van Persie's return

A cursory look at the fixtures shows that Robin won’t be missing too many important fixtures, Chelsea on the 29th and Liverpool in December looks to be the biggest games. It would not be so wrong to assume that Van Persie would have been rested for the remaining Champions League fixtures, he wouldn’t have been taking part in the Carling cup games either, which leaves 9 Premiership games and an Fa Cup match (depending on the opponent I’m sure he would have been rested for this game also).

For all the talk of how much offensive options we have I find it rather silly that the loss of RVP would mean a collapse of our season. The same people who were doubting Robin’s effectiveness in a 4-3-3 formation now is questioning Arsenal’s effectiveness without him.

I am confident that Eduardo will step up to the plate, at the very least the laughable rumours of his impeding departure to Liverpool has be quashed. I don’t see Eduardo as being less effective than RVP in the striker role, more likely he will relish the opportunity to show how good he can be.

It seems that we forget there is also Carlos Vela and Theo Walcott coming back from injury lay-offs. Theo in particular will bring something we’ve been missing on the pitch… pace. We’ve already shown that we can get goals from all over the pitch, add to the team Rosicky and Nasri and you’ll see that there’s really no need to fear.

When we started the season Van Persie scored only once in the first 5 games, there was talk of him not being up to the task, now we’re doomed without him? I’d be more worried if we had lost Gallas or Vermaelen, but I don’t think losing a striker is going to affect us that much.

I can’t see any reason why we won’t continue scoring 3 goals a game without RVP, yes Van Persie was on a run of form, but the team is red hot too bringing in Eduardo is just adding fresh wood to the furnace.