Gallas: The injury before the exit?
Written by Chris Michaels on Tuesday, March 9, 2010
It comes as no surprise really – it's a narrative we've heard before from Wenger.
At his press conference ( before the Porto game, Arsène Wenger gave us the bad news about William Gallas: "We were impatient with him and we pushed him and he wanted to get on as well, that is why maybe it has happened. But there is no obvious sign as to why it keeps coming back. He has no pain at all, then goes for a little jog and then it goes again."
The story here's not Gallas' history of being injury prone, but whether this is the beginning of a story of niggling injuries that will keep on going until William Gallas leaves Arsenal in the summer.
It's a situation that persists across the Wenger years – when a player nears the end of his contract, and a new one remains unsigned, mysterious injuries emerge and drag on as Winter turns to Spring. It happened with Edu. It happened with Wiltord. In different circumstances it happened with Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell in 2006.
The common feature is – when it comes to critical situations, the players come back , like Lazarus in shorts. So will it happen now with Gallas? The timing's suggest it will. He's been out for a month already, and we now seem to be back at the start of his rehab, so early to mid-April would seem the likely moment of his re-emergence.
This injury takes place against a growing background noise around his possible summer exit – with Roma the current likely suitors.
That noise is likely to persist across the next six weeks. Would Wenger be crazy enough to invent or wildly exaggerate an injury for a player who has had an excellent season, but who may well want a final few years in the Italian Sun? I doubt it, but the way this story keeps coming back is disturbing.
Maybe the real question is whether we'll miss Gallas, and how much?
Looking at the fixtures list, and hoping our injury curse doesn't spread to Sol and Silvestre, we can assume the games over the next 6 weeks will be shared between the two as partner to Vermaelen. Whilst I'd pick Sol every time if I could, we can assume his age and lack of longterm match fitness will mean he misses a decent amount of them.
Picking the games he NEEDS to play, you'd go for tonight, West Ham, Birmingham and the big one at Tottenham away. Silvestre can be trusted for at least the trip to Hull and Wolves at home. He might even get the West Ham game. That Tottenham game though is crucial, and just happens to be bookended by the Quarter Finals of the Champions league. So if we're still Gallas-free by then, Wenger will have to make a tough decision.
I'd bet though, that that's just the moment we'll see Gallas return. From the 27th of March to the 10th of April is really the hub point where we'll see what this season's going to mean: an unlikely title or another season of nearlys and maybes.
It's also the point where Gallas will have to decide for himself whether we've got enough excitement for him for the next season at least, or whether it's time for a new challenge.
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