Morning everyone, welcome to a brand new week.
We’ll get to the World Cup stuff in due course, but let’s begin this morning with Declan Rice who lifted the lid a little on the injury problems he’s been dealing with over the last few months. Speaking at the England camp ahead of their game against Ghana tomorrow, he revealed – not unsurprisingly to be honest – he’s been playing through the pain for some time:
I was feeling a little bit of neural pain in my hamstring, which I was managing from after Christmas with Arsenal for a very long time. Obviously, not a lot of people would have known that. It was all behind-the-scenes stuff but it was a smart decision [to be subbed off on 70 mins in England’s first game].
I did the maths on the latest Arsecast, and for Arsenal and England he’s played 5000+ minutes since August, and his season is still going with his international commitments. He continued:
It’s an obscene amount of games. The schedule was crazy but what can we do about it? You can’t sit and complain. We have to just get on with it for the moments like I had in the Premier League, winning that Premier League. You know you’d play as many games as possible to have that feeling again and knowing that there’s a World Cup at the end of it as well.
You know you’d put your body on the line to be always in to play. It’s a lot of games but we’ll get our break at the end.
There’s the thing – but how much of a break will he get? He absolutely deserves one, because he was superb for us last season, and deservedly won the player of the year award via arsenal.com. His playing style is such that his 5000 minutes mean 5000 full-on minutes, non-stop running, pure endeavour from first whistle to last, and it can’t be any kind of shock if he’s having to contend with some physical issues because of that.
It’s why, when people think of the summer recruitment and suggest we don’t need to bring in a midfield player, my eyebrows are raised. I think we absolutely do, and part of the reason is to protect Rice, among others, because of how much we’ve asked of them in the last few seasons. William Saliba, for example, told the French press he’s not 100%, but like many other players has been playing through the pain for Arsenal and will continue to do so for France in this World Cup.
Most people will have some concerns over the schedule that top players have to contend with, and we all understand that almost all of them are dealing with some pain or ache or niggle. Nevertheless, it seems more important than ever that clubs and managers acknowledge that by virtue of how they build their squad. Last season, with all due respect to Christian Norgaard – who I think was good enough and experienced enough to share some of that burden in the Premier League – we went through the season with a midfielder the manager didn’t believe capable of doing that. Next time out we need a player who is not essentially redundant for those 38 games, because the reality is if you continue to just play Declan Rice in every game, there will be consequences we really don’t care for.
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Right, to the World Cup and Cape Verde did it again! After a draw against Spain in their first game, they drew with Uruguay last night. This wasn’t a 0-0 either. They went ahead before conceding twice, but got a 61st minute equaliser thanks a goalkeeping howler, and held on for a 2-2 draw against Marcelo Bielsa’s side. Incredible, and I love this clip from the BBC of the reaction to their first ever World Cup goal. That leaves them with a game against Saudi Arabia to potentially qualify for the knockout stages, while Uruguay have to face Spain who beat the Saudis 4-0 (Mikel Merino was the only Arsenal involvement as a sub, as David Raya and Martin Zubimendi stayed on the bench). With a Dublin man at the heart of the Cape Verde defence, and with Ireland not in this tournament, I’m now officially adopting the ‘Blue Sharks’!
Earlier Leandro Trossard played the full game as 10 man Belgium drew with Iran, whose restrictive treatment at this tournament is an issue that is not receiving the scrutiny it should. At the very least the playing field should be level for every team, for them it’s not, and for reasons of sporting integrity they ought to have had greater solidarity from other teams in this tournament. The silence has been deafening in that regard. Their draw was secured in no small part thanks to a brilliant, dare I say Raya-esque, save from goalkeeper Alireza Beiranvand – watch here.
The other game saw Egypt come from behind to beat New Zealand 3-1. Mo Salah was on the scoresheet, as was as a lad called Zico, and for those of us of a certain generation, that’s some World Cup heritage right there. Tonight, France take on Iraq, Argentina face Austria, Norway play Senegal and Jordan and Algeria round out the schedule.
For some extra reading, I enjoyed this from Aaron Timms about Thierry Henry’s punditry in Fox Sports. It’s a piece which also involves sticking the metaphorical knife into Alexi Lalas as much as possible, and who doesn’t enjoy that?
Finally for today, I promised to put together something which collated the best of the independent/unofficial merchandise which celebrates Arsenal winning the title (mostly). There’s loads of stuff from books to badges, posters to t-shirts to fine art, and you can find it all here. I apologise in advance to your bank balance.
Ok, I’ll leave it there for now. We will have an Arsecast Extra for you a bit later on, James is still on Chicago time so we’ll be recording in the morning for him, which means the pod will be out late afternoon in this part of the world. We’ll put out the call for questions on BlueSky @gunnerblog.bsky.social and @arseblog.com in little while, so when that happens fire away using the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server.
For now, have a good one.