Laurent Koscielny is out injured for the weekends game, and the diagnosis is that it doesn’t look good – according to John Cross from The Mirror.
Uh oh. That was the immediate thought when I read the news. Koscielny is a quality defender, but also one of just two senior central defenders we do have. With Debuchy already out long term, the Gunners defence is stretched massively now.
Arsenal injury update – Koscielny out and doesn’t sound good, Rosicky should train today and Walcott will play in next u-21s game.
— John Cross (@johncrossmirror) October 16, 2014
Koscielny had been known to be nursing a achilles injury for some time. It was a problem waiting to happen. Sadly we have no way to fill this void until January, which is when he will probably return and then Wenger will stress he’s like a new signing and we don’t need any more.
Youngsters like Bellerin and Hayden will have to step up and perform with maturity, just as Chambers is doing now. With Koscielny out and Chambers suspended, the only senior defenders left available for Saturday are Per Mertesacker, Nacho Monreal and the injury prone Kieran Gibbs. It’s a recipe for disaster.
Sometimes teams have managed with this many defenders and admittedly part of this problem is probably bad luck, but that doesn’t change the fact that Wenger failed to replace Vermaelen. With the Belgian sitting on the bench in Barcelona, you kind of wish there was a way to reverse the transfer right now.
I’m not Vermaelen’s biggest fan and I wasn’t upset when we sold him, but choosing not to replace him was a poor decision that is proving to have catastrophic results.
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