Arsenal: Mohamed Elneny red card overturned in quite the pickle

Arsenal faced an uncertain near future with Mohamed Elneny’s red card. This situation could well have been a bigger problem than it seems.

Arsenal had already been hit with on key absences. Henrikh Mkhitaryan has suffered ligament damage to his knee and, as such, will be out for at the very least the duration of this month, though there is hope he will return by the end of the season.

Then there was Mohamed Elneny‘s phantom red card, which would have meant another three week absence from the Premier League that actually would have left the Gunners in quite the frightful pickle, the likes of which wouldn’t strike you as that serious on the surface, but they actually are.

Elneny has been a most valuable rotational option, filling in when needed, earning a new contract and establishing himself as the ultimate plug-in to any competition and any situation.

Recently, he has made his killing in the Premier League while his esteemed cohorts – Jack Wilshere and Aaron Ramsey – are off slaying the European menace in the Europa League.

The new theme of rest and recouping has taken the two prolific midfielders and left Wenger the luxury of giving Elneny plenty of playing time in the top flight of England.

Against Southampton, Elneny was oddly shown straight red for a brief spat with Saints’ players after Wilshere and Jack Stephens got in a tussle, with the latter being shown straight red for throwing Wilshere to the ground.

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Wilshere escaped with a yellow.

No more than a minute later, Elneny was off in what was a conspicuous call that has to be attributed as a make up call, because it was a yellow at most.

Since then, the Gunners have appealed the red and had it overturned.

However, in the process of fearing a three month layoff for someone who was previously seen as fairly non-essential, I got to thinking just how hazardous this midfield set-up is, in the sense that there are some unanswered questions looming within it.

If Elneny would have missed out, there would have been two options. One of which is far more desirable than the other. The first option, we will call this the “please don’t pick this” option, is that Wilshere or Ramsey would be asked to do double duty in Europa and Premier. With their injury track record, mostly caused my over-exertion, this is a horrible idea.

The other idea would have been Joe Willock. Give the young man a chance, like Reiss Nelson has gotten, because it’s just the Premier League, which we’ve been out of for months.

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One option is sensible and reserved, one is needlessly ambitious and risky. Now that neither option needs to be deployed, I guess we will have to wait for an answer until another day.

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