Another setback for Santi

Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger spoke in his Friday press conference today and bore the sad news that Santi Cazorla is progressing slowly and wouldn't be back until April. Last month Santi claimed that rumours of setback were not true but it looks like the manager was right at the time and we'll have to do without our Spanish magician for a while longer.

I would not be surprised if Santi or Jack don't feature again for the rest of the season and it's the lack of these players that has probably cost us so heavily. It has put a lot of pressure on Mesut and as such he's only contributed 2 assists in his last 9 games having racked up 16 in 20 before that. We're now seeing Wenger's attempts to recitfy that by playing a more mobile Welbeck and an enthusiastic Iwobi.

It's frustrating as a fan to see us suffer the same problems every year. We rely on a core group of players who when injured we don't have adequate replacements for. The loss of our diminiutive maestro forced Wenger to abandon the counter-attacking football that saw us instilled as title favourites early in the season and we've trundled along playing a poor version of tiki-taka and it's been costing us big time.

Santi must have known he'd had a setback last month so I wonder why he claimed he was on track? I miss Santi so much. His partnership with Coquelin is so underrated but so effective. I miss his clever passes, the speed of which he could switch play and the additional chances he laid on which helped us be so effective up to and including the 3-0 win over United. Most of all I miss his smile. The sight of him scurrying around the pitch with a gigantic grin brightened even the darkest of matches.

I wonder what he is doing with his time off? I wonder what most of our players do with their down time from injury. They live such different lives to us it's hard to fathom what they do. The gap between normal life and that of a professional footballer has never been bigger and is probably one of the reasons we demand so much from them and get annoyed when they aren't living up to expectations - Theo! Ox! Alexis!

In my spare time I'll do a bit of writing, a bit of reading, binge on box-sets, get on tikiislandslot.com, play a few video games, enjoy the countryside and the beaches near me, take the dog for a walk or watch Arsenal of course. However my spare time is rather limited. I have a full-time job, kids, pets, family and whatnot to worry about. It sounds like I've got a lot of hobbies but that'll probably take up about a 2 months of free time. I imagine the average footballer could do that in a week as well as going to training and playing twice. It must be incredibly boring when injured and pretty much all of your time bar a few hours a day is 'free time'.

There are obviously injuries that cannot be avoided but it seems Arsenal are gifting their players a lot of extra free time because of their training methods and perpetually lacking in cover. Is it too much to ask to have enough players to effectively rotate? Could Santi and Coq's injuries have been avoided were they a little fresher from having adequate cover? Would we be walking the league had Wenger not been forced to abandon his counter-attacking tactics?

Fundamentally all of our issues can be traced back to a lack of players. It seems an overly simplistic thing to say as you can't guarantee that your cover won't get injured 5 minutes into their first match but when you don't even have that cover in the first place you are just asking for trouble.

We say it every summer but hopefully this one will be different and we finally get the depth we need to have a real crack at the title. The sad thing is, is that next year we probably won't have as good as a chance as this season even if we do have enough players.

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