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Arsenal the most injured team in recent Premier League history

By Craig Pearson

Arsenal's French midfielder Francis Coquelin (L) leaves the field injured during the English Premier League football match between Arsenal and Chelsea at the Emirates Stadium in London on September 24, 2016. / AFP / Ben STANSALL / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or 'live' services. Online in-match use limited to 75 images, no video emulation. No use in betting, games or single club/league/player publications. / (Photo credit should read BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images)
Arsenal's French midfielder Francis Coquelin (L) leaves the field injured during the English Premier League football match between Arsenal and Chelsea at the Emirates Stadium in London on September 24, 2016. / AFP / Ben STANSALL / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or 'live' services. Online in-match use limited to 75 images, no video emulation. No use in betting, games or single club/league/player publications. / (Photo credit should read BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images) /
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Arsenal are officially the most injured Premier League team in recent history.

As if Arsenal didn’t have enough going against them right now, the Gunners have also been named the most injured Premier League team in recent history, as reported on by the Mirror. The study began from the 2011-12 season, and took into account only the 11 teams who have been ever-present in the league since that time.

Arsenal have seen their players out injured for the most number of days since 2011-12, with 10,285 days being the total. Manchester United were in second place, but were almost 700 days behind Arsene Wenger’s team – that’s nearly two whole years!

The Gunners also have the two players who have spent the most time on the sidelines injured. Unsurprisingly, Jack Wilshere and Abou Diaby take the top two spots in that table. Some notable names behind the Arsenal pairing were Vincent Kompany, Daniel Sturridge, Phil Jones and Andy Carroll.

So if Arsenal didn’t already have an issue with just allowing themselves to consistently fall short in the Premier League title race. The club may also have an issue of just allowing injuries to pile up with, again, the club not making changes to rectify it.

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It’s the one constant with Arsenal. Whether something is going good or bad, it will be left as it is. It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong. However, the Gunners might actually be just a little harshly treated by these statistics.

If a player is injury prone, then that’s just the way they are physically. You can try and reduce the time they spend out injured, but ultimately, they’re going to be out much of the time anyway.

If Wilshere and Diaby played for a different club, they would still likely be at the top of the pile, and certainly around the top. That pairing alone accounted for 17 percent of Arsenal’s total of 10,285 days of injured players being sidelined.

A player like Aaron Ramsey has had long spells out injured. Theo Walcott, too, is another player who has been out for long periods of time. A more revealing statistic would actually be the total number of individual injuries a club accrues – and to how many different players.

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Not length of time, or how injury prone one or two players are, but how consistently any one club picks up injuries – serious or minor. Instead, these stats can be looked at in a number of ways. That’s not to say Arsenal’s injury issues don’t need to be looked at more in-depth by the club.

Certainly not everything can be put down a few individuals racking up the injury days. But just because Arsenal have had players out injured for the longest amount of time in recent years, isn’t necessarily as simple as just purely blaming the club itself.

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