No footballer can play in every match and, even for a young man as durable as Bukayo Saka, this moment was always going to come. The Arsenal winger has featured in a club-record 87 consecutive Premier League games, dodging injuries as adeptly as he dodges opposition defenders, but after 34 minutes of Tuesday’s Champions League defeat in Lens, it finally happened.
An attempted backheel, a twinge of a muscle and then a grimace on his face. The severity of the issue was not immediately clear – it might yet prove to be minor – but the mood at Arsenal was one of concern. “Obviously, that is a worry for us,” said Mikel Arteta in his post-match press conference. In a separate television interview, the Arsenal manager admitted: “It doesn’t look good.”
The timing of Saka’s injury, a few days before Arsenal’s meeting with Manchester City, could hardly have been worse. And for Arsenal and Arteta, it raises a few uncomfortable questions.
Firstly, should Saka have even been playing against Lens? He had limped off the pitch in his last two matches and Sunday’s clash with City is the club’s biggest game of the season so far. If there was ever a time to wrap him in cotton wool, was it not this week?
The counter-argument is that a Champions League match against formidable French opponents is not the time for rotation. Arsenal have spent the last six years working to get back into Europe’s top competition and they intend to make their mark in it. This was not a Europa League tie against limited opposition and Saka, Arteta insisted, had no lingering issues following the weekend’s knock. “He was perfectly fine,” said the Arsenal manager.
How do you replace an injured Saka?
The second question that will need answering, if Saka is indeed ruled out for any meaningful length of time, is whether Arsenal can cope without him. The obvious truth is that no one can possibly know, because he has always been available, but the fear at Arsenal will be that his absence will massively blunt their attack.
Arsenal have spent years, and hundreds of millions of pounds, building a squad they believe is capable of challenging on multiple fronts. There remains one obvious weakness, though: the lack of high-class backup for Saka.
In every other attacking position on the pitch, Arsenal have at least two players who can fit into Arteta’s system. If Gabriel Jesus cannot play, for example, Eddie Nketiah will come in. If Martin Odegaard picked up an injury, Fabio Vieira and Emile Smith-Rowe would compete for his place. There would be a drop-off in quality, of course, but no fundamental stylistic changes.
When it comes to Saka, there is no-one else. The other wingers all prefer to play from the left, and it spoke volumes of Arteta’s thinking that Saka was replaced by Vieira, rather than Reiss Nelson, when he limped off on Tuesday. Vieira is a totally different player to Saka, a scheming playmaker rather than an explosive winger, and Arsenal’s attack lacked venom and speed after the substitution.
Equally concerning is that no other player contributes as many decisive moments as Saka. Arsenal have scored 22 goals in all competitions this season, and Saka has scored or assisted 10 of those. Against Lens, he became the first player this season to record five goals and five assists for a team in Europe’s big five leagues.
There have been attempts to sign another right winger in recent years. Arsenal wanted to buy Raphinha from Leeds United, before he moved to Barcelona, and have previously cast admiring glances towards Wolves forward Pedro Neto. Depending on the finances involved, that interest could be reignited in the coming months.
Admittedly, the pitch is not straightforward. How do you convince a talented right-winger to join a club where the star player in their position is a 22-year-old who never seems to miss a game? Arsenal need a player who is good enough to fill in for Saka when required, but bad enough to not expect to feature all the time. That sweet spot can be hard to find.
In the short-term, assuming that Saka will indeed be missing from this weekend’s match, the likelihood is that Jesus will be pushed to the right wing. Nketiah would then start in the centre of Arsenal’s attack. But without Saka and Gabriel Martinelli (also injured), Arsenal will be without their two most explosive and direct forwards.
Saka’s injury is a slap in the face that was always going to arrive. A matter of when, not if. The problem for Arsenal is that it has landed at this precise moment, with Martinelli also out and with Pep Guardiola’s City looming on the horizon.
Saka’s likely absence presents Arsenal’s first big test of the campaign and it comes just in time for a meeting with the league’s most testing opponents.
