logo
ENع
#

Latest news with #BukayoSaka

Bukayo Saka snubs Sky F1 and Nico Rosberg at Spanish GP: ‘That was not very friendly'
Bukayo Saka snubs Sky F1 and Nico Rosberg at Spanish GP: ‘That was not very friendly'

The Independent

time2 days ago

  • Entertainment
  • The Independent

Bukayo Saka snubs Sky F1 and Nico Rosberg at Spanish GP: ‘That was not very friendly'

Bukayo Saka snubbed Sky F1's punditry team as the England football team took in the sights and sounds of the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday. Thomas Tuchel took his squad to the race in Barcelona for a break as they prepare for their upcoming matches against Andorra and Senegal in the next 10 days. Yet Sky Sports F1's main presenter Simon Lazenby, alongside 2016 F1 world champion Nico Rosberg, took over the responsibilities of the absent Martin Brundle in talking to stars on the grid ahead of Sunday's grand prix. Yet when Lazenby asked Saka for a quick chat and who he was supporting at the race, the Arsenal star was uninterested in a conversation, simply stating: 'Not much to say.' Rosberg, clearly unimpressed, remarked: 'That was not very friendly.' Lazenby did manage to chat to England captain Harry Kane and defender Dan Burn. Kane said: 'It's hot, I'm roasting! Looking forward to the race, it's my first grand prix. A few English guys doing well this year. 'I love Lando, he's got a great chance to win the championship, hope he can get out in front. It's all about preparation, it's just about going out there and being free.' Cole Palmer, hero for Chelsea in the Europa Conference League final on Wednesday, was also present in Barcelona, alongside the likes of Jude Bellingham and Ollie Watkins. Oscar Piastri started on pole position for McLaren, with Lando Norris in second and Max Verstappen starting in third.

What led to Arsenal's injury problems this season?
What led to Arsenal's injury problems this season?

New York Times

time5 days ago

  • General
  • New York Times

What led to Arsenal's injury problems this season?

The 2024-25 season was a bruising one for the Arsenal men's team, and they may well bear some scars from it — quite literally. Many of their best players — Gabriel, Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka and Kai Havertz — endured significant injuries. A number had to undergo surgery to repair whichever body part had failed. Advertisement After the campaign's final home game against Newcastle United on May 18, manager Mikel Arteta addressed the situation in his post-match speech from the pitch. 'I know what these players have been through, this staff, this season. Any other club in this position will finish in a position you cannot even dream of, so please say thank you to the players, say thank you to the staff and thank you to all of you for your support,' he told fans at the Emirates Stadium. 'We need to recognise what we've done. I've seen other teams with one or two injuries finish fifth, eighth, 16th, 17th.' Arteta clearly believes injuries — as well as suspensions — played their part in derailing Arsenal's latest attempt at winning their first men's silverware since the 2019-20 FA Cup. According to Premier Injuries, the football injury statistics resource founded by Ben Dinnery, Arsenal suffered 36 separate 'time-loss' injuries in 2024-25 and lost a total of 1,297 days to them — the fourth-highest total in the Premier League, behind Ipswich Town, Tottenham Hotspur and Brighton & Hove Albion. Under Premier Injuries' definition, injuries are recorded in any instance where a player is forced to miss at least one game. Omissions due to fatigue or illness are not counted, and these figures do not include injuries picked up during pre-season. Arsenal have been afflicted with persistent injury issues, with Premier Injuries recording them as suffering seven separate incidents involving players' hamstrings this season alone. Arsenal feel that muscle and tendon damage are up in general — and while the lack of an official audit of Premier League injuries makes that difficult to authoritatively corroborate, several industry professionals have confirmed to The Athletic they believe such issues are on the rise in football. But Arsenal have still suffered more than most. Advertisement A simplistic analysis — and one that should not be discounted — is that they have simply been unlucky. A club can have the most rigorous processes in place to combat and prevent them, yet still injuries can occur. Arsenal also lost Odegaard, their captain, for eight weeks after he was on the wrong end of a heavy challenge while on international duty. That sort of thing is almost entirely outside of a club's control. But Arteta's Liverpool counterpart Arne Slot rejects the idea that fitness record is determined chiefly by luck. Although eventual title winners Liverpool had players such as Alisson, Ibrahima Konate and Trent Alexander-Arnold go through spells on the sidelines, their injury record has been superior to that of runners-up Arsenal. Eleven outfield players played more than 30 league games for Liverpool this season. For Arsenal, it was just five: William Saliba, Thomas Partey, Gabriel Martinelli, Leandro Trossard and Declan Rice. 'If you think injuries are only luck or bad luck, then we've been lucky,' Slot said at a press conference in March. 'But we've tried to believe we try to prevent them from a certain way of working. 'So that we don't have many injuries, I don't see that as luck. I see this as, first of all, top professionals, our players do everything to stay fit. Second of all, great facilities and great staff. You need to show this over a longer period of time to consider it luck or bad luck. If we can continue doing this for years without many big injuries, then it's also quality.' So, what are the controllable factors that contributed to Arsenal's issues? And how can they improve upon them next season? As the end of the season approached, Arteta spoke frequently about not having enough first-team players at Arsenal. 'We knew from the beginning of the decision that our squad was super-short and, being super-short, we had some players that had a high probability of getting injured,' he said in a press conference this month. 'So we knew that, and we cannot do anything about it.' Advertisement Wanting more players at his disposal has been a consistent theme for Arteta recently. 'If we demand the players to play more games in more competitions with more travel and more intensity, the only solution to deal with it is (to have) more players,' he said in April. 'I don't see any other solution. I think we have to be very conscious that there are certain limits that the players can do.' These comments are interesting, as Arteta has previously shown a preference for keeping to a smaller squad. In 2022, he set out his stall by saying to the media: 'If you ask me what I want, it's 22 outfield players and three goalkeepers.' And a year later, he called his 30-man pre-season squad 'unsustainable'. Arteta seems to have revised his view. Earlier this year, presumably due to the increased frequency of games and the intensity of them, he said his preference was 'always 23 or 24 outfield (players) and four goalkeepers'. Including the teenage trio of Myles Lewis-Skelly, Ethan Nwaneri and Tommy Setford, Arsenal had a squad of 22 outfield players and three goalkeepers in 2024-25. That would suggest they were at least a couple short of what the manager would like. Arteta has since intimated the issue was not just the size of the squad, but the balance of it. 'It's about the optimal size of the squad,' he said earlier this month. 'Then within that squad, everybody has to accept a role. I mean to have 22 (outfield players), but with five full-backs that they all feel they are tier one, you have a big problem.' If Arsenal's squad was too small, or imbalanced, that was in part self-inflicted: Arteta was involved in the conversations where it was decided to send Fabio Vieira out on loan, for example. They could have kept Vieira as a rotational option, allowing them to rest Odegaard and Saka, rather than let him rejoin previous club Porto for the season. Advertisement The good news is Arsenal have an opportunity to address this issue in the summer transfer market. Who is on their list of targets when the window opens next month could be significant too: they can recruit for durability. When the club were weighing up a move last summer for Bologna and Italy defender Riccardo Calafiori, concerns over his fitness history were flagged. Arsenal proceeded, inspired principally by Arteta's admiration for the player, but as Premier Injuries notes, Calafiori went on to have five separate absences due to injury in his debut season. At least seven Arsenal players have been operated on this season: Takehiro Tomiyasu, Ben White, Saka, Gabriel Jesus, Havertz, Gabriel and Jurrien Timber. Of these, Saka, Havertz and Gabriel all underwent surgery on hamstring injuries. Three Arsenal players with the same medical situation in the same season is striking — and, if you count Reiss Nelson, who spent the season on loan at Fulham, it's four. One hypothesis is that hamstring injuries are an inevitable consequence of the game's increased intensity. The number of sprints a player is required to perform is markedly higher these days and, typically, hamstrings are damaged by sprints or sudden turns. But why are so many of Arsenal's injuries resulting in surgery? One aspect to consider is the evolution in how these injuries are being treated. As diagnostics advance, more muscle/tendon issues are being picked up. More players are being scanned, and the quality of that imaging has markedly improved. The outcome of operations is also substantially better. Perhaps a decade ago, some of these injuries would not have been treated surgically. In today's game, there is an understanding that this route offers a more stable recovery timeline and reduces the recurrence rate. Arsenal have suffered the ill-fortune of suffering multiple injuries among players at the same position. That may be more than mere coincidence, though. Take the right-back spot. Tomiyasu's knee issues limited him to six minutes of first-team football this season. The Japanese international had surgeries in August and February, and is now set to be out again until around the turn of the year. To add to Arsenal's issues at full-back, White underwent a knee procedure which meant he missed 14 consecutive Premier League games between November and February. Advertisement With those two out, Timber played 86 minutes or more in 13 of those 14 fixtures — in addition to five more starts across the Champions League and Carabao Cup. That is placing substantial strain on a player who was in his first season back after an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee injury wiped out almost all of his 2023-24 debut year with the club. Timber's durability and consistency were admirable — but he was carrying an ankle problem. He has now undergone surgery and Arsenal hope he will be available again during pre-season. When fit, Tomiyasu's versatility enables him to cover a variety of positions. His ongoing unavailability adds additional load across the other members of Arteta's back line. Perhaps the most notable issue was at centre-forward. Between December 11 and January 12, Jesus started seven of Arsenal's nine games across three competitions. It was his most consistent run of selection since December 2023. Unfortunately, that brief run was ended by, yes, injury. During the FA Cup third-round tie against Manchester United, Jesus ruptured his ACL, ruling him out for the rest of the season. His absence then increased the demands on Havertz. The 25-year-old German is a superb athlete whose career has been largely free of significant muscular injuries. Arsenal have grown reliant on his durability. Between the start of the season and early December, Havertz started 13 of their 14 Premier League games and all five Champions League fixtures. He was not substituted in any of those. Havertz's stamina and pressing ability meant he was always kept on the field, occasionally even reverting to a highly demanding midfield role. Even when Arsenal were 5-1 up against Sporting CP and led 5-2 at West Ham, he remained on the pitch. Havertz was rested and rotated more as Jesus came to the fore in December, but once the Brazilian was sidelined the following, Arsenal's dependency on him returned. Advertisement It was hoped February's mid-season training camp in Dubai might provide some respite — instead, he returned from it with a torn hamstring and did not play again until brief substitute appearances in the season's final two games this month. By going through the winter transfer window without signing a striker, Arsenal gambled on Havertz's fitness — and lost. The job of a physio or club doctor is effectively risk management. Every day, they use training data, player questionnaires, gym performance, the eye test and gut instinct to assess the readiness of every individual for training or games. But it will never be an exact science. Player availability is a negotiation, too. Typically, managers want players on the pitch — and players generally want to play. The job of a club's medical department is to provide information and advise caution when necessary. But their authority is not absolute — and in these conversations, the views of the manager and player inevitably weigh heavily. The likes of White and Gabriel are known to be eager to play even when medical reports suggest they could be at risk if they do so. That's a valuable trait for any manager, but sometimes athletes need to be protected from themselves. Arteta is a demanding coach who prizes intensity in training sessions. That's not especially unusual — intensity is a buzzword at almost every Premier League training ground these days. The Arsenal manager is the dominant personality at their London Colney base. It's fair to ask then whether those colleagues charged with assessing player fitness — such as head of sports science and performance Tom Allen and club doctor Zafar Iqbal — have the necessary authority to challenge and deter him. Both those men are highly respected in their fields, and after Arsenal's injury issues this season, their input will be vital to attempts to avoid having the same, or something like it, happen in the next one. The process of review has already begun. Arsenal assess their performance every two months to fine-tune during the season as it goes along. Now there will be a bigger debrief, where the campaign can be analysed in depth, and plans for pre-season will be adjusted to provide players with the best possible fitness foundation. Advertisement New sporting director Andrea Berta, who came to the club in March, will be part of those discussions too, because the solution to this issue may lie in how the squad is constructed. That element of gambling over a player's fitness will never disappear but building a bigger, better first-team group should mean that, in borderline cases, a more conservative option can be taken. Arsenal must protect themselves against a similar outcome next season — and the transfer market provides their best opportunity to do that.

Arsenal's campaign 'remembered as one of frustration'
Arsenal's campaign 'remembered as one of frustration'

BBC News

time6 days ago

  • Business
  • BBC News

Arsenal's campaign 'remembered as one of frustration'

Arsenal secured a third runner-up finish in a row but this campaign is going to be remembered with Arteta will have the same feelings and will be pondering what could have been as another season ends without a Gunners were robbed of key forwards for large part of the season with Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard, Gabriel Martinelli, Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus all suffering a medium to long-term injury at some point in the Arsenal's football was not as free-flowing as in previous seasons and, despite the injuries, the debate that went on all season was whether they needed a is clear that they do and after failing to bring one in during the January transfer window, the pressure now moves to this summer are interested in Alexander Isak, Viktor Gyokeres and Benjamin Sesko but it remains to be seen which one of those three, if any, come through the has progressed Arsenal but if the squad doesn't improve, the danger is next season will be remembered in exactly the same way.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store