Mikel Arteta has suggested that Arsenal’s recent injury situation has been a nightmare, after Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka became the latest players to suffer knocks.

Speaking after Arsenal’s final game pre-international break, Mikel Arteta told the media the one thing he wants when club football returns is to have a fully-fit squad.

“What I am just praying is that after the international break, I have the team fully equipped physically, they are available and they are fit because it has been an absolute nightmare for eight weeks,” Arteta said.

“Issue after issue. Not only the ones that are not able to play, but the ones that are able to play only for certain moments, only for certain days, not able to train.

“So I’m just asking that, because the team, the desire that they have, and how much we wanted this… [there is] just no question about that.

“We just need that on our side to be able to be more consistent.”

Arsenal’s injury situation has indeed been chaos for the last couple of months.

At left-back, Jurrien Timber has had a couple of setbacks since recovering from his ACL injury, Riccardo Calafiori is out for weeks with a knee issue, Oleksandr Zinchenko missed all of September with a calf injury, Kieran Tierney has been out all season, and Takehiro Tomiyasu is also absent.

At right-back, the problems are similar, given the player overlap. But on top of the issues with Timber and Tomiyasu, Ben White has been in and out of the team since returning from injury in mid-October.

At centre-back, Tomiyasu’s absence hasn’t helped, and Gabriel Magalhaes came off injured against Liverpool before spending most of the following week absent from training. Those injuries were compounded by William Saliba’s red card and suspension.

In midfield, Declan Rice reportedly has a broken toe and is playing through the pain, Mikel Merino missed a month of action before even playing a game for Arsenal, and Martin Odegaard has just returned from two months out.

Then in attack, Kai Havertz is managing a knee injury, Bukayo Saka has struggled to play full matches since his injury during the October internationals, and Gabriel Martinelli has also been managing a problem he picked up in October with Brazil.

So whilst most of the above players should be available after the break (depending on further assessments on Rice and Saka), Arteta is right that it’s not just about availability on matchdays.

The manager needs his players in training every day and ready to play the full 90 minutes when matches come around. So far this season, he’s rarely had that with his first-choice team.