I think you can start one of them, just not both, and I'm strongly inclined to pick Cedric over Tavares. At LB, he's kind of a disaster, but someone upthread mentioned a backline of White - Holding - Gabriel - Cedric. I think that's better overall than swapping Holding for Tavares and rearranging accordingly. Saka at LB playing that advanced role while Cedric is a stay-at-home RB could also work. Midfield options are to either trust Sambi to play like Partey, or drop Xhaka back and revert to the stagnant 4-2-3-1 we used earlier this season. So either (R-L) Cedric, White, Gabriel, Saka; Sambi, Xhaka, Odegaard; ESR, Martinelli, Laca or White, Holding, Gabriel, Cedric; Xhaka, Sambi; Saka, Odegaard, Martinelli; Laca And if you're the religious type, send your prayers to your deity of choice that no one else gets injured.
If you had come up with a nightmare scenario for this match, you'd have been hard-pressed to create anything worse than that. Horrible display and now bad injuries when we can least handle them.
It's hard to argue with much of this. And I think Stevie Nicol nails it when he mentions Partey and Xhaka getting overrun when we should have dug in at the middle of the pitch. Anyway, we unquestionably bottled it today. Just a bad performance. Now it's a question of how we respond.
Oh, and I ought to say: much love to Patrick Vieira. When he was running our show at NYCFC he made everyone, and the squad, better then too. I think he's seriously underrated as a manager.
Poor Tavares he was thrown in to a tough game away with a more experienced manager. It's like Holding's debut vs Liverpool. He was forced to start but was inexperienced. Awful display. I'm sure we won't get top four at the expense of, well spurs. They did business in Jan which is paying off quickly. Their depth is undeniable and they score a lot which worries me as we the GD is broadening by each GW. I'd take top six honestly. Just not 8th again.
That’s true. Except for the Partey Injury which happened during the match, and the Tierney injury which was revealed just prior to the match. Unfortunately those two absences are likely to be quite impactful to our near future.
I missed the second half - what's the deal with the Partey injury? Tierney being out for the season is gonna hurt.
I was watching 2T and still missed the Partey injury! Someone on this board said Martin Tyler commented about him going off with a thigh injury. I’ll admit that I’m assuming the worst and that it will be a medium/long recovery of a soft tissue injury, to a player who doesn’t exactly have a track record for bouncing back quickly. Let’s see what information the club releases in the next day or two and then we’ll know for sure whether we’re fvcked.
https://dailycannon.com/2022/04/thomas-partey-update/ “I don’t know,” Arteta replied, “but he felt something in the same area that he got injured previously, so it’s a big concern.”
Yeah that's not good. Tyler speculated thigh, then I asked in this thread if that was his previous nagging injury, and someone (you?) answered that it was his ankle last time? So the question is what specific component he injured and is it in fact the same as previous? The latter would obviously be a "big concern" as his boss said. I guess we just have to wait patiently/nervously to find out from official club sources. Edit: After a quick search it seems that maybe this season's injury was mainly to ankle, but last season's included hamstring, thigh, etc.
Gee, what if one were to just look at Arsenal.com? https://www.arsenal.com/news/team-news-tierney-partey-tomiyasu "Thomas Partey Right thigh. Thomas is currently being assessed ahead of the weekend after aggravating his thigh during Monday night’s match at Crystal Palace." not to mention... Kieran Tierney Left knee. Kieran felt discomfort after a training session on Thursday, March 31. Further assessments and scans have confirmed that Kieran has damaged his left knee. A specialist consultation took place on Tuesday, and as a result of further discussions with Kieran and our medical team, it has been decided that Kieran requires surgery to his knee. This procedure will take place in London in the forthcoming days. Kieran’s rehabilitation programme will start immediately after his surgery, at which stage a clearer understanding will be established on his recovery timescale. However, it is likely that Kieran will now miss the remainder of this season. and of course there's also... Takehiro Tomiyasu Left calf. Takehiro is making progress in his recovery from a muscle injury to his left calf, which he sustained in February. Takehiro had successfully recovered from a muscle injury sustained to his right calf in January. It is hoped Takehiro will be back in full training after the match at Southampton on Saturday, April 16.
Simon Collings said this has been a knock that KT has been carrying for a while and it got aggravated. If so—for fcuks sake Kieran, WHY ARE YOU PLAYING TWO FULL FRIENDLIES FOR SCOTLAND YOU DONUT
Yup, this was discussed a week or two ago by Arteta, when he clarified to a journo that his latest calf injury was not the same leg as his just previous injury, and how that was a bit of a weird surprise.
I don't do Twitter but I heard this brilliant little ditty by Gunnerblog on the Handbrake Off pod, so let's see if I can share... 🎶 Full-time sing-song pic.twitter.com/4saECwdZXE— gunnerblog (@gunnerblog) April 4, 2022
When he was about to come back from the first one he tweaked the other. I think this was around the new year. Calf injuries are a weird one—with the obvious caveat of not knowing exactly what it is, they really should not be happening like they happened to Tomi in his situation I will give our fitness staff credit though: our injuries seem like they’re way down the past couple years, and pretty much all the big ones this year have been players coming back from international break, when you’re handing off players to god-knows-who and their potential stone-age philosophies/treatments (Scotland setup for example).
If that's true that he's been playing on it for some time before he no longer could, and given the fact they said he'd start rehabbing immediately after the surgery, I'll speculate------reiterating total speculation on my part-----it's a meniscus tear. I had surgery for a meniscus tear nearly two years ago, and the ortho wanted me on an exercise bike (just for 10 minutes or so) the very next day. Full on running 6 weeks later. My other speculative guess would be MCL. But it's rare that surgery is required for that, usually just rest and then rehab after a week or two, albeit you're not ready for cutting/lateral movement for 6 weeks or so.
Agreed. I am active right now, and I am going to surgery for complex tears in both meniscuses next week. Doc said that I would be good to bike and swim in a week and would be fully recovered in six weeks.
Yeah, it's weird. There was never an "aye carumba" moment that I could point to when I knew I did something. I was playing footy and training for another half marathon and a couple of weeks before the race, I started having pain medially about a mile or two into a run. Over the course of the next week, it got to where I couldn't run at all but walking was fine. Based on the MRI, ortho said a small tear had probably been there for a while and I just reached a tipping point where it got more significant. Anyway, enough of my injury stories. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
During the match, I felt everyone was being overly harsh on Tavares, and listening to the Arsenal Vision podcast all of them agreed that Nuno wasn't as bad as portrayed and that he should start vs Brighton. - Everyone was bad, Gabriel in particular as the left CB next to Tavares was awful. If Gabriel deals with the two first half goals better, it's a completely different match as Palace didn't actually create many chances. - Tavares coming off at half could be lack of faith by Arteta or could be tactical. Down 2-0 he needed to do something and Tavares was the easy choice to sub off as he hasn't been a regular. - If Arteta drops Tavares, he's done in an Arsenal shirt. Give him a shot against Brighton and maybe he has to come off again at half and he's still done, but maybe he does okay and it gives him something to build on. - With the other injuries, it may be best to limit the number of changes to Sambi for Partey and Tierney for Tavares to keep everyone else in the same system and comfortable with what they've been doing all year.
I have a similar story. I was training for a marathon last year, and I would feel pain in my knee (and ankle) when I would get above ten miles. I just thought it was from the impact of running. When I do bjj and wrestle, I am fine unless I am in certain positions in which my knee is targeted (heel hooks, knee-bars etc), but that’s expected. Progressively, it got worse, so I got an MRI. That’s when I learned about the complex tears on both meniscuses. For multiple reasons, my surgery was scheduled almost two months after my MRI, so I have just been training. I run, kick-box, do box jumps, play soccer with my kids and jump rope, and it’s not an issue. I only feel it sometimes on my standing leg when I kick a bag. It’s weird. But, the ortho surgeon said that it would feel better on its own, but the tears are too deep for it to heal 100%, so I am doing the surgery. But, I feel fine (95% of the time), so it is hard to come to terms that I am injured. I could see how Tierney could play through it without knowing the extent of the damage.
I was only able to watch the last 35 mins, and I won't torture myself to watch the first 30 mins, which apparently were the worst. I am encouraged that even with all the injuries, setbacks, poor play in the first 30, physicality against us, and goals conceded against the run of play, the boys never let up and or visibly quit. In the past, quitting/letting up was a huge issue, especially in the Wenger years. I/we just expected a mental collapse was coming when things weren't going our way. This squad, despite it's youth, does seem to have more resiliency than most of our teams over the last few decades.