Arsenal: Santi Cazorla hell could yet yield Gunners heaven

In an interview with Spanish newspaper Marca, Arsenal’s Santi Cazorla detailed the ordeal that he has gone through during his ankle rehabilitation. But the hell that Cazorla has endured could yet yield heaven for the Gunners.

From the start of the 2013/14 season, Santi Cazorla became the linchpin of this Arsenal side. After being featured in a more advanced position earlier in his North London tenure, it was at this point that Arsene Wenger, with the signing of Mesut Ozil, decided to change things in his midfield.

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Francis Coquelin would come in as the anchoring defensive midfielder, Aaron Ramsey would be given the license to bomb from box-to-box, and Cazorla was the calming, controlling influence at the heart of it all. It was a well-balanced, energetic, and dynamic midfield three.

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But since that time, Cazorla has struggled greatly with injuries. In the 2013/14 campaign, he made 30 Premier League starts. The next year he made 33. That is a good level of availability throughout a long and testing season. But in the last two seasons, he has started just 22 league games, including only seven last year. He is yet to play this season, and, per Wenger, it is unlikely that he will be close to returning to the action before the turn of the year. This is a much-absent midfielder.

It is an absence that has proven costly. In the same period, from the start of the 2013 season to October 2016, when he first suffered his latest ankle injury that has kept him on the sidelines up until this point, Arsenal averaged 2.15 points per game with him at the heart of the midfield. Without him, that figure fell to 1.70. That is a substantial and alarming disparity.

Usually, I do not like using team statistics to justify an individual’s ability. Pascal Cygan and Jeremie Aliadere are Invincibles, for example. But when the sample size is over several years — in this case, nearly four — and the difference between the two figures is so vast, it does have some value pertaining to the importance of Cazorla.

And that is why his hopeful return to the Arsenal team is so pivotal. In an extremely revealing interview with Spanish newspaper Marca, Cazorla delineated the hellish rehabilitation process that he had to endure to recover. Eight surgeries, a nearly-amputated foot, and what will, when all is said and done, be approaching an18-month absence.

Nevertheless, his return, although is deserving of a cautious reception given the extent of his injury and the time of his absence, will be most welcome for a team that is still missing his assured influence at the heart of its midfield.

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Cazorla may have been through hell to return. And he is a man of great endurance, fight, and resolve. Many, myself included, would have succumbed to the temptations of retirement by now. But he could bring a heavenly calmness to Arsenal this season. If a title challenge is to be enjoyed, then Cazorla will be at the heart of it.