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Arsenal: 4 Reasons This Team Is Different Than Years Past
1. Injury Pile-up Comes At The Right Time
A group of key players have come back from injuries in recent weeks for Arsenal. But they have only been replaced with other injuries to some of Arsenal’s backbone talent.
Arsenal FC
Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain Aaron Ramsey and Laurent Koscielny have all made their returns in the past two weeks. They watched on as one by one, Francis Coquelin, Santi Cazorla and Alexis Sanchez all went down over the course of three matches.
Coquelin and Sanchez have both proven themselves integral parts of Arsenal’s play. Their transitions from defense to attack have created frequent chances for the men from North London. The Chilean winger is one of Arsenal’s main men when it comes to converting those opportunities. He has done so to great effect thus far. The Spaniard Cazorla has been taken advantage of by good attacking teams, but he has run the show against Premier League opponents and guided Arsenal to victory more than once.
These holes in Arsenal’s first team, combined with their minimal spending in the summer of 2015, might indicate a galvanizing January window purchase. Lars Bender, Mauro Icardi, William Carvalho and Grzegorz Krychowiak have all been linked with moves to the Emirates, and there are still three weeks to go until the window opens.
Next: Why Campbell Has Surpassed The Ox
All of these factors are pushing Arsene Wenger into a spot that he is not in very often. Some years during the January window, Arsenal’s French tactician is hesitant to spend because he is unsure that his team needed strengthening. On other occasions, he is implored to spend because of the Gunners’ poor league position. The spending is money spent to achieve fourth place rather than win a title.
In this instance, he is somewhere in the middle. Second place in the Premier League is not a bad place to be going into the end of December. Qualification for the UCL knockout stages through a second place finish was realistic for Arsenal after being drawn in a Champions League group with Bayern Munich. In this way, Wenger can spend to push his team further and win a trophy that is not the FA Cup.