With it being midweek and no match until Friday night, it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, pretty quiet in Arsenal’s world at the minute but Emi Martinez is off on loan, Hector Bellerin is off for surgery, Arsenal went off paintballing and Denis Suarez to Arsenal is off.
The biggest news to break on Tuesday was the club confirming that Hector Bellerin would be out for between six and nine months as expected. It’s a cruel blow to one of our best players and there’s no doubt we will struggle to replace him.
Stephan Lichtsteiner has shown why Juventus was happy to let him leave on a free (compare the players they let go for nothing v the ones they bring in for the same price). Carl Jenkinson is, of course, still at the club but nobody is really sure how or why so he hardly seems like a nine-month answer. Unai Emery will probably turn to some sort of job-share between Lichtsteiner and Ainsley Maitland-Niles whose versatility is stopping him from nailing down a best position.
Bellerin will undergo surgery, if he hasn’t already, and we can look to Rob Holding’s identical injury for a timeline for the Spaniard. Older readers will remember when an ACL injury meant the end of your playing career. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case but it does mean the guts of a year out of the game with an increased chance that your other ACL will go as you reorientate your body to compensate.
We spoke to Dr. Rajpal Brar, DPT, a Wellness coach and performance specialist from LA about the problem. He put together this brilliant video about the injury, why it happens, how surgery repairs the problem, and what Holding (and Bellerin’s) recovery should look like:
In other news, the whole team and coaching staff went paintballing as a team building exercise. Most people couldn’t help but point out how Emery is positioned in between Aaron Ramsey and Mesut Ozil which might mean something but probably doesn’t.
Yesterday we started the week in a different way… Great #teambuilding… We are the @Arsenal ! pic.twitter.com/ex5ORPwGuN
— Unai Emery (@UnaiEmery_) January 22, 2019
What a sausagefest, eh?
The S*n believe that Mesut is wearing a Turkish flag on his head when it looks like it spells out the word ‘Arsenal’. It’s not clear from the photo one way or the other but a quick Google Image search shows that Mesut isn’t in the habit of posing with a Turkish flag.
Given the problems caused by meeting Turkey’s president, it’s hard to blame him.
Still, not like the S*n ever let facts get in the way of a good narrative…
As I was just wrapping this up, I was alerted to the news that Emi Martinez is set to join Reading on loan as per his agency:
Arsenal goalkeeper Emi Martinez is set to join Reading on loan, as per his agency. pic.twitter.com/BZjcjyY1lP
— Chris Wheatley (@ChrisWheatley_) January 23, 2019
Finally, in gossip, Mundo Deportivo are reporting that Arsenal and Barcelona’s negotiations for Denis Suarez have fallen apart. Arsenal offered 2m to take him on loan but would not commit to an obligatory purchase option.
Barcelona then wanted Suarez to sign a longer contract to protect their investment but the player refused the terms on offer with MD writing “unless a new dramatic change, Denis will finish the season at FC Barcelona.”