As the World Cup closes in, the English press have become very concerned with the amount of football Bukayo Saka is playing for the club that pays his wages.

Bukayo Saka plays a lot of football. This is not a new fact.

It appears, however, that many in the English media have only just spotted it and have become somewhat concerned as the World Cup in Qatar approaches.

Ahead of Arsenal’s game against Southampton, the question came up again. Although, to be fair, I suspect that the post-PSV press round and the pre-Southampton one were conducted at the same time. Still, the questions were asked.

When asked how Saka had become more ruthless, Arteta pointed to his temple, “Here,” he said, as reported by the Daily Telegraph.

“Robustness is in your mind. The gym is very important, but what happens in your brain is more important. How much you want it, how tough you want to be with yourself, how pushy you want to be with yourself and what you do to get to that level.”

As if they know better, Arteta was then asked again about how much he is playing Saka. “We have so much data and know what the players have done, what they can do, how they respond when they play every three days, when you play three, four, five consecutive matches, where the risk can be,” he said.

“Obviously we want to protect our players, which means they need to have the robustness to play those matches when necessary, because it’s going to be necessary and after the World Cup it’s going to be crazy the amount of games we’re going to have.”

He also revealed that he has been in dialogue with a number of national team managers. “It is great for both managers to have an update on where the players are not only physically but mentally, issues they have had, things we insist from them and what helps, or what brings them down,” he added.

Saka has played 882 Premier League minutes this season and 196 in the Europa League for a total of 1,078 minutes.

This is the third highest total in the squad, yet the same journalists do not seem concerned about the number of minutes Granit Xhaka (1,168) and Gabriel (1,170) have played.