Gunners boss worried by Arsenal injury list

(GSM) – Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger admits that Arsenal’s litany of injuries this season still baffles him.

The Frenchman’s current list of walking wounded has six names on it with Cesc Fabregas joining William Gallas and long-term absentees Aaron Ramsey, Robin Van Persie, Kieran Gibbs and Johan Djourou in the treatment room.

That is bad enough but at times this season Wenger has been without up to a dozen players.

The good news is that Fabregas, who misses Tuesday’s big game against Porto, will not require surgery on the hamstring problem which has kept him out on three different occasions this season.

But Wenger remains at a loss to explain the reasons for Arsenal’s unprecedented injury problems this term.

“There is no surgery needed (for Fabregas), that is for sure,” he said. “It is always not a big hamstring that goes, it is grade one. Small, small, small. If you play on it, it goes anyway and after 10 minutes he has to go out,” he added.

He continued, “But we have not found any obvious reason (for the injuries). We have investigated a lot because we have not so many muscular injuries, more contact injuries.

“For example we have had Gibbs, Van Persie and now Ramsey. It’s three. I don’t know how to qualify that any more because it is three tackles that every time broke the legs of our players.

“So the long-term injuries we’ve had are more accidents.”

Wenger is also worried of Diaby and Walcott’s fitness, “Diaby is a little bit different because he had big ankle surgery so they say the balance of his body changed and sometimes he walks in a different position than he should.

“Walcott had his shoulder problems. It is difficult to find a common denominator to all the problems we have had.”