Premier League title challengers Arsenal have been hit with a body blow with the news that key attacker Bukayo Saka will be out for “many weeks” with a torn hamstring.
Saka has been in superb form again this season with 15 goal involvements in the Premier League already – scoring five times and providing ten assists.
But the 23-year-old went down holding his hamstring after 24 minutes and was forced to come off during Saturday's 5-1 thrashing of Crystal Palace and left Selhurst Park on crutches.
Manager Mikel Arteta admitted after the game he was “worried” about the extent of Saka's injury and his fears proved well-founded as he revealed in the press conference for Friday's game at home to Ipswich Town that the muscle was torn rather than just strained.
And the Spanish coach revealed that Saka “was gutted” at the news of how serious the injury was. “You can tell he's not been injured [seriously before] because he was really emotional, he was really down,” said Arteta – who will also be without loan attacker Raheem Sterling who has picked up a knee problem – on Monday.
“We need to lift him up because he's part of what we do. It's part of his job, and he will be fine, but he's going to need a few days.
“He's going to immediately realise that he's so important in that dressing room. His energy level, his body language, the way he communicates with the rest of the team, because it's the only way at the moment that he can help, so he better do that well.
“[It's] another part of the development of a player. At some stage at this level you're going to get injured. Unfortunately, [this is] badly. It could also have been much worse. It could have been something else that can take you out for a year.
“It's how you react to that, how you overcome that situation and it's a great learning process for him as well. It is what it is. He's injured, we cannot change it. We're going to use this time now to help him.”
England international Saka has been an increasingly influential figure at the North London club since making his debut in 2019, scoring 12, 15 and 20 goals in all competitions across the next three seasons.
He has nine goals in 24 matches this season, missing just two of the Gunners' 26 games across the league, League Cup and Champions League, also due to a hamstring problem.
Arteta believes that a serious problem like this was inevitable given the amount of games top players are expected to play for club and country, calling the workload “unsustainable”.
Saka has played more than 52 games in each of the last four seasons, including two European Championships and the mid-season 2022 World Cup in Qatar for his country.
“It's probably an accumulation of a number of seasons,” added Arteta. “Bukayo and Declan [Rice], they've played over 130 games in two seasons so what's going to happen in the second one, the third one, the fourth one? If that continues the same way, it's probably unsustainable.
“And we have to find ways to physically turn them into monsters. That they can cope with anything. The fact that you play and recover is not a good pattern because you don't train. And the body needs to train. You start to lose a lot of factors in the physical aspect that's key to performance.”
One glimmer of light for Saka, Arsenal and England is that Arteta is “very optimistic” that the injury will not mean the end of his season in which the Gunners are still active in four competitions, while the Three Lions start their new era under manager Thomas Tuchel with two games in March.
Arsenal sit third in the Premier League, five points behind leaders Liverpool, who have a game in hand, and take on Newcastle United in a two-legged League Cup semi-final (January 7 and February 5) plus Manchester United in the FA Cup third round (January 12).
In the revamped Uefa Champions League, they lie third in the table after six matches, with another two games to go in the group stage, at home to Dinamo Zagreb (January 21) and away at Girona (January 29).
Tuchel starts his England reign with a World Cup qualifying double-header against Albania on March 21 followed by Latvia three days later.
