UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE Group F:ARSENE WENGER has admitted his Arsenal squad has so far been unable to balance the twin demands of the Premier and Champions Leagues and said if they continued to suffer so many injuries they would struggle to compete over the course of the season.
The manager is without nine players for the visit of Olympiakos tonight, with the headline-grabbing absentee remaining Jack Wilshere who, Wenger said, has had a metal screw inserted to repair his fractured ankle and will be out for 22 weeks.
But Wenger has been hit hardest in defence, where he is missing four of his five recognised centre backs, necessitating the deployment of Alex Song, the defensive midfielder, alongside Per Mertesacker against the Greek champions. Thomas Vermaelen, Laurent Koscielny, Johan Djourou and Sebastien Squillaci are on the sidelines while, further forward, Wenger is without Theo Walcott, Gervinho, Abou Diaby and Yossi Benayoun.
The 18-year-old Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is in contention to start on the right wing in a game that Wenger suggested is a must-win. It feels as if this is the most straightforward of Arsenal’s group matches but Wenger is determined to win each of the three at home, pick up something extra on the road and finish top of the table to avoid a difficult last-16 draw. Arsenal were paired with Barcelona last season, after slipping up in the second half of their group-phase campaign.
Arsenal have reserved their best performances of a difficult season for the Champions League, with the away victory over Udinese in the play-off second leg arguably eclipsing the battling point at Borussia Dortmund in the opening Group F tie. They also defeated Udinese at home. But after each European fixture they have slumped to dismal Premier League defeats, at home to Liverpool and away at Manchester United and Blackburn Rovers.
“We’ve paid a heavy price in the Premiership for the quality of our performances in the Champions League,” Wenger said. “The Udinese away game was terrible for us because it was 33 degrees and we had to give everything. We lost three or four players in that game and then we had to go to Man United. It was a bit too much.
“After we went to Dortmund, we went to Blackburn and so we’ve had the bad luck to play twice away after the Champions League [aways], and it’s difficult for everybody. Look at Saturday at what happened [when Arsenal beat Bolton Wanderers, having not played in the Champions League in midweek].”
Wenger’s comments inadvertently called into question the depth of his squad but his attitude seemed to be that he could not legislate for the high number of players clogging up his treatment room. “You cannot go through the season with nine injuries,” he said. “Throughout the season, the squad cannot cope with that.”
Wenger hopes to welcome back Koscielny, Walcott and Gervinho for Sunday’s derby at Tottenham Hotspur and Djourou, Squillaci and Benayoun are also short-term casualties. Vermaelen and Diaby are three weeks from fitness and it leaves Wilshere, technically, as the only long-term problem.
The 19-year-old midfielder underwent surgery on Monday, having told Wenger that he first felt the discomfort during England’s Euro 2012 qualifier against Switzerland on June 4th.
He aggravated the injury in the friendly against New York Red Bulls on July 31st and has not played since, spending time in and out of a protective boot and suffering setbacks before the decision to operate was taken.
Wenger said the club’s medics had scanned Wilshere’s ankle and given him the all-clear to travel on the tour of east Asia in mid-July but that the “crack in the bone became worse and worse”. The problem is related to the fracture Wilshere suffered as a 16-year-old but, despite the lengthy lay-off, Wenger said that “big relief” had been provided by the surgery.
“When people go into surgery, you never know what they will find,” Wenger said. “What they found was a very clean ankle and they came out very positive. They said that it was better than they expected it to be.
“People say to me that the crack didn’t heal because there is no blood supply so it doesn’t glue together any more.
“When you see the scan, it looks like a little hole in the bone. We needed to screw that together because it wouldn’t heal. When he was in the boot, it did not get better. It can be [that it got] even worse.”
Guardian Service
