Arsenal beat Chelsea 2-1 at the Emirates yesterday, and Declan Rice went off in the 76th minute with what looked like a muscle issue after chasing back to stop a Pedro Neto counter. He asked to come off, Christian Norgaard replaced him, and Arteta told the press afterwards that the midfielder would need to be assessed before Wednesday’s trip to Brighton.
The team got the three points, but this is the story of Arsenal’s last three seasons in a nutshell.
Sometimes people have short memories of this stuff. In 2023-24, the season Arsenal came the closest, Jurrien Timber tore his ACL in the opening game and was done before he had barely touched the ball for the club.
The Dutch defender had come from Ajax as one of the most exciting signings the club had made in years, and he was gone in 90 minutes. That campaign, it is reported that Arsenal’s players collectively missed over 898 days through injury.
They still finished second, which tells you everything about how good that squad was, but also how much those absences cost when it mattered. The title went to City by two points!
It was worse in the 2024-25 season. Odegaard, the captain and the man everything runs through in the final third, missed two months with ankle ligament damage. Saka pulled his hamstring and was out for close to three months. Havertz suffered his own serious hamstring problem and didn’t come back all season. Jesus, who had spent two years fighting his way back from knee issues, ruptured his ACL and was done again.
By April 2025, Arsenal’s players had combined to miss 139 Premier League games that season alone.
The club became the first in Premier League history to record 100 separate fitness setbacks across back-to-back seasons, and Arteta even confirmed the club had started investigating repeated warm-up injuries after four pre-match setbacks this season alone. That seems to be more than bad luck; it looks like a structural problem.
And here they are again. Ben White missed the Chelsea game with a knock he picked up in training. Merino, who has been one of the best midfield signings in the league since joining from Real Sociedad, is out for the season with a stress fracture in his foot, picked up in the 3-2 loss to Manchester United in January. And now Rice is a doubt going into a run of games that includes Brighton on Wednesday and Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League round of 16.
Rice’s situation is a bit tricky because he and Zubimendi have been the heart of Arsenal’s midfield all season, and both look very tired after playing so many games. When the former West Ham captain is fit and controlling the pace, Arsenal look like a team that can control any match in Europe. But without him, Arteta has far fewer options, and that is a big problem as the next games leave no room for mistakes.
What makes all of this genuinely maddening is that this is the best squad Arteta has had. Viktor Gyokeres has done his bit since arriving from Sporting last summer, already 15 goals in all competitions with the business end of the season still to come.
While still trying to catch up, Eze has brought exactly the creative option that has been missing for long, when Arsenal played without a genuine number 10 and somehow still competed. Zubimendi has been the midfield anchor that Thomas Partey was supposed to be at his best. This is a properly built squad, and it is still being taken apart piece by piece by the treatment table.
You can look at City for comparison, and right now, it actually looks encouraging. Guardiola’s side have been relatively inconsistent. They drew at Sunderland in January, then lost to Manchester United before being beaten 3-1 at home by Bodo/Glimt in the Champions League.
They’ve had moments of quality, the win at Anfield in February being the most obvious, but they don’t feel like the relentless machine that used to simply grind every title race into the ground by March.
Arsenal have 29 games played and lead by five points, with City sitting second on 28 games and one game in hand. City can close the gap. But this version of them closing it over ten games while Arsenal stay healthy feels like a stretch.
Now, Arteta’s not putting tackles in on his own players, and some of what has happened is genuinely bad fortune. But Ben White is 28 and has had seven separate injury lay-offs since last August. Seven. Timber’s ACL on debut felt like a freak thing, but the Dutch fullback has since had more stints on the sidelines in two seasons.
According to Sky Sports, knee injuries alone have kept Arsenal players out for 668 days across the last two campaigns. Something in how this squad is being loaded and managed isn’t working, and the club owe it to themselves to get to the bottom of it before another title race slips through their fingers.
After tearing through Spurs 4-1 and facing Chelsea, Arsenal are still five points clear with nine games to go. They’ve taken 14 points from their last five. Raya has 13 clean sheets, which leads the league.
Against the Blues, Saliba and Timber both scored from corners, and 16 of Arsenal’s goals this season have reportedly come from set pieces, a joint Premier League record for a single campaign. If they can keep eight of their first-choice players fit through the run-in, the title is theirs. The Gunners still have to go to the Etihad, though. Regardless, the fixtures, while tough, are manageable.
But has it ever been straightforward with Arsenal? The injury list is not just a side story, it is the story, and it has been for three years. Whether it writes the same ending this time is the only question worth asking between now and May.
