da mrbet： The England international could miss Sunday's massive Premier League showdown with Manchester City with an injury that has been a long time coming
da premier bet： Nobody was in the least bit surprised when Bukayo Saka set up Gabriel Jesus for Arsenal's opener in Tuesday night's Champions League game in Lens. It's what he does. Saka isn't just an outstanding talent, he's also on fire right now.
Indeed, that assist meant the winger was the first player across Europe's 'Big Five' leagues to rack up both five goals and five assists this season. However, if Saka's involvement in Jesus' strike was inevitable, so too was what followed.
Shortly after the half-hour mark at the Stade Bollaert-Delelis, Saka attempted a back-heel and felt a twinge in his hamstring. He gestured to the sideline that something was wrong and was promptly replaced.
Manager Mikel Arteta admitted afterwards, "It doesn't look good." And it really doesn't, from any perspective. Any injury to Saka, no matter the severity, is a major problem for Arsenal – but the timing is particularly disastrous in this instance, with their talisman now a major doubt for Sunday's massive Premier League showdown with Manchester City at the Emirates Stadium.
And yet while one cannot but feel sorry for Saka for maybe missing the biggest game of the season so far, it's hard to feel any great sympathy for Arteta or Arsenal for the worrying situation they now find themselves in, as this feels like a mess all of their own making.
Getty Images'We need to protect Bukayo'
When Arsenal triumphed 4-2 at Aston Villa back in February, the surprise title challengers were rightly ebullient after scoring twice in injury-time. However, Oleksandr Zinchenko, who had scored his side's equaliser just after the hour mark, wasn't entirely happy. Indeed, in his post-match interview he made a point of expressing his anger at some of the challenges that Saka had been subjected to at Villa Park.
"Bukayo is an unbelievable player," the Ukrainian said. "All the full-backs from the other teams know he's so dangerous, so they try to provoke him, tackle him and the referees should know this. We can speak about [Lionel] Messi, Cristiano [Ronaldo], Neymar and players like this. The referees need to protect this kind of player, they need to look after them."
It remains a very valid point. The game's flair players should always be protected by officials. But Arteta was under no illusions about the fact that opponents would continue to target their talisman.
"Saka's going to have to deal with that [rough treatment] – and not every week, but every three days," the Spaniard said. "It's his game – teams are not stupid and they want to stop him. We need to protect him."
But the Spanish coach arguably has not done a good enough job in that regard.
AdvertisementGetty ImagesEighty-seven appearances in a row!
Saka hasn't sat out an entire Premier League game since May 2021. In the two years and five months that have followed, he has featured in a club-record 87 league games. Incredibly, 83 of those appearances came as a starter, which is testament to Saka's quality, consistency, durability and importance to Arteta's Arsenal.
However, it's an incredible amount of football, particularly for one so young. Stress and strain are inevitable consequences of such a heavy workload, and burnout has long been a concern.
Any Arsenal fan will tell you that there were times during the tail end of the 2022-23 campaign that Saka looked tired – which was wholly understandable, given how heavily involved the academy product had been in his side's surprise title challenge. He started all but one of Arsenal's 38 Premier League matches last season – and on the one occasion he began on the bench, he still ended up playing half an hour.
GettyArsenal's talisman
Arteta's eagerness to have Saka on the field as much as possible is, of course, understandable. Arsenal are simply not the same side without him, as underlined by the dramatic dip in the quality of their performance after his enforced withdrawal against Lens, who ended up inflicting a first defeat of the current campaign upon the Gunners with a second-half goal from Elye Wahi.
It's also worth pointing out that no Arsenal player scored more goals (15) or racked up more assists (11) in all competitions last season than Saka. However, even the Gunners have been aware of the need to find a quality understudy for Saka for some time now.
GettyWhy was no understudy signed?
A concerted effort was made in the summer of 2022 to sign Raphinha from Leeds United, but the Brazilian made it clear that his preference was to move to Barcelona. It was presumed that Arsenal would then turn their attention to other targets but no other offers were made – despite their long-time interest in Bayer Leverkusen's Moussa Diaby.
Even this summer, it was thought that the club might take advantage of talks with the Bundesliga outfit over the sale of Granit Xhaka to thrash out a deal for the France international. No move materialised, though, with Arteta preferring to waste £65 million ($79m) on Kai Havertz, a player that Arsenal most definitely did not need, while Diaby is now starring for Aston Villa in the Premier League instead.