re: Arsenal 2025/2026 Season Thread: CHAMPIONS OF ENGLAND

Reports confirming Kai's injury not serious. Assume he misses the 1st leg no matter what. Hopefully back for Fulham or the return leg

Eze, Calafiori, Martinelli all in training today.

No Timber or Kai still

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What a miss Timber has been man

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For sure, but at least he is getting well needed rest. Arteta was running that dude into the ground

I'm going to push back on this narrative.


Yes, he could rotate Zubi more. But the most minutes in a single season Rice has played was for West Ham. No one is sitting here saying west ham ran him into the ground.

With Timber, White has been injured, so Timber has played a lot. White played a lot because Tomiyasu was made of glass. Arsenal can't just go out and buy players like City. If a signing doesn't work or gets injured, we are stuck.


Arsenal has 6 players in the top 100 for PL minutes. City has 7.



Only two outfield players have played every single PL minute. Milenkovic at Forest and Van Dijk at Liverpool.


Let's look at players that have played more minutes than Zubi. Elliot Anderson, James Garner, Igor Thiago, Morgan Rogers, Jared Bowen, Morgan Gibbs White, Luke Shaw, Ezri Konza, Neco Williams, Dominik Szobolszia. If we sign any of these players and they play LESS minutes at Arsenal, people will say Arteta ran them into the ground.


The point is the best players on their teams play every game and it sucks our best players haven't played more.



Semenyo is right below Zubi. He is on 2,837 minutes and Zubi 2,846. Is Semenyo being run into the ground?


Guehi is on 2,790 Pl minutes. More than any of our defenders.



Obviously, we have cup minutes. But the option there is to just not advance in the cups, and you get less minutes. We could have fewer overall minutes to fill if we just went out of the CL like City.

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But the most minutes in a single season Rice has played was for West Ham

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Can you quote the stat on this? It must have been the year west ham won conference league.

I think you make some good points, that other teams also play their players a lot, but it doesn’t change the fact that for most of the year we were in four competitions and poorly rotated. But…

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Let's look at players that have played more minutes than Zubi. Elliot Anderson, James Garner, Igor Thiago, Morgan Rogers, Jared Bowen, Morgan Gibbs White, Luke Shaw, Ezri Konza, Neco Williams, Dominik Szobolszia.

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We’re just looking at PL minutes, which doesn’t include the three other competitions Arsenal has been in this year. How many of these players played in the champions league and went as far as we did in the FA cup and EFL cup? Guehi and Semenyo didn’t start the year with city, crystal palace’s European games are a joke, and Bournemouth was knocked out of the EFL cup in August.

I think a lot of our injuries come down to fatigue/overtraining (general sports med term), which then gives you less depth, which then causes less rotations and more minutes on fewer players. It’s a bad cycle. Soccer is an incredibly demanding sport already, and with so many competitions and Arteta’s very demanding play style (press press press) it only sets us up for more injuries.

Lastly, number of minutes is only one metric that can affect overall load/fatigue. Distance covered, number of sprints, and sprint intensity is also very important and tracked diligently by sports scientists (at least that’s my experience with USSF). I would love to see those metrics for our players compared to league averages.

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Can you quote the stat on this? It must have been the year west ham won conference league.

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21/22 - 4,422 (10 Europa league games, but played more efl and fa cup games)

That Conference league season he had 4,148 (11 conference league games but no EFL cup games)


Im getting this from trasnfermarkt.


Arsenal minutes
4,274
4,128
3,912

So rice is used to playing this much. And because Zubi was subbed, he went ahead of Zubi on minutes.

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We’re just looking at PL minutes, which doesn’t include the three other competitions Arsenal has been in this year. How many of these players played in the champions league and went as far as we did in the FA cup and EFL cup? Guehi and Semenyo didn’t start the year with city, crystal palace’s European games are a joke, and Bournemouth was knocked out of the EFL cup in August.

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Yes, because we are talking about not rotating in the premier league. You want to do cups? Well that's where players like Kepa and MLS minutes are. And I don't think it's fair to say Arteta hasn't rotated in the knockout CL games. Even though Norgaard did start against Leverkusen, so we did rotate. Norgaard has more CL minutes than Pl minutes.

If City had advanced, their players would have more CL minutes and more minutes overall.


And guehi playing for palace doesn't erase the minutes from his legs. He has played in more comps than all of our players. Community shield, conference league, champions league, efl cup, fa cup and premier league. also plays for England.


Guehi total minutes - 4,072 (more than rice)


So, unless you want to say Guehi has been run into the ground, you can't say that about any of our players.



A couple of folks say we are overplaying players and then it just becomes the narrative. I decide to actually look into it. And I'm not going to compare us to a Bayern who already won their league (currently getting smashed) and can rest players anyway. I'm comparing us to our direct rival, City. And with city we can go down the line, Haaland has a lot of minutes, Silva has a lot of minutes, O'reilly has a lot of minutes.

I know our game isnt going to be like this one, but do you guys really want it to be?


now 5-3


If we looked like Bayern in attack, would fans be okay with this? I dont think they would.

We have like 3 guys that can really break a game open on a whim, and a bunch of guys that are hard workers.

Need more moments guys, like Eze

Or just finishers in general. At 1 point PSG had 5 SOT and 5 goals. We don't have finishers like that.

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ETA: My point being the game is moving away from double pivot and it's killing us (unless one of the guys can pass really well, and we don't have that, or have guys to pass to lots of times) We don't have enough guys that can interchange and play all over.

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But we didn't even play the double pivot until now really.

Odegaards heat map has always been on the rt side. We have never deployed him as a 10 until right now. He was the rcm, Partey cm, xhaka lcm. And then Rice came in and took over that spot. Those two seasons I believe were the highest scoring under Arteta.


And I wanted to see the double pivot with Eze and I forgot who we first played that against but it looked like shite. But we prob had martinelli Gyokeres and madueke ahead of him and that hasn't worked.


If we make it to the final and get pumped I'll hold my hands up. But I still don't think if we came out and attacked like this and lose the first leg that we will get any applause.



In the 1-1 v city it shows we played a 4-3-3 with Merino in midfield. In the 0-2 final loss we played the 4-2-3-1 with havertz in the 10. In the 1-2 loss we are back to the 4-3-3 with Odegaard in midfield.