Arsenal's Injury Worries May Have Started Before The Season Even Begins

Arsenal may have a much bigger problem than just getting players back late from the World Cup.

The real concern is whether they'll have enough time to prepare them properly for the 2026/27 season.

While my colleague Alfie Cairns Culshaw has outlined when Arsenal's stars are expected to return, the greater issue isn't the dates themselves. It's everything those players will miss before they get there.

Pre-season is not just a collection of friendlies and fitness drills. It is one of the most important foundations for a successful season. At elite clubs, it is where players gradually rebuild the physical demands needed to withstand another Premier League campaign. 

For several of Arsenal's most important players, that process could be significantly compressed. This makes them much more vulnerable to injuries and could cause issues throughout the season as they struggle due to the lack of preparation they have had.

Why pre-season is so important

According to the UEFA Elite Club Injury Study over the past two decades, elite football has become increasingly demanding. Year on year the physical demands on footballers is increasing. The analysis states that:

"professional players now undertake more high-intensity activities per match than they did previously… professional players now work year-round apart from a 4–6 week break between seasons."

The analysis also points to the fact that the increasingly crowded football calendar is putting players at risk with international tournaments and year-round competition leaving players with little opportunity to recover.

That changing landscape helps explain why pre-season has become so valuable. Rather than simply improving fitness, clubs use the period to progressively expose players to the sprinting, accelerations and football specific loads they will encounter once competitive matches begin.

Friendly matches remain important for tactical preparation, but the real priority is on the fitness training. Now, the weeks before a new campaign have become one of the most carefully managed periods of the year. Sports Science staff use preseason to progressively increase training loads, expose players to match-like demands preparing for the stresses of competitive football.

The pre-season has become so incredibly detailed that clubs monitor almost every aspect of players during that process. There is tracking of external workload, diet control, psychological work and even aspects of sleep analysis are all used to help players improve endurance, build fitness and condition themselves for the season ahead. There are group sessions, but the hallmark of the modern club is that there is extensive individualised  training too. Each player now has programmes created that are tailored to their injury history, position and physical profile. The objective is to give players the best possible platform to tolerate the demands of a Premier League season. Injuries cannot be eliminated, that would be impossible, but clubs can make sure their risk is significantly reduced.

How Does This Affect Arsenal?

Another UEFA Elite Club Injury Study found that teams completing more pre-season training sessions generally experienced lower injury burdens and greater player availability during the competitive season, suggesting that the preparation completed before the first league fixture may have lasting consequences. The study found that:

"A greater number of preseason training sessions was associated with less injury load during the competitive season in 4 out of 5 injury-related measures”

In the context of Arsenal's season, this presents a genuine challenge. The issue is not simply that several players will miss pre-season, but that many of the squad's most important contributors are among those returning late. Rather than progressing through the same carefully planned programme together, the Arsenal performance staff will likely be managing players who are all at different stages of their physical preparation.

This also limits those key players in the amount of exposure they have to the vital minutes of fitness preparation they need. It then becomes a vicious circle. Lower physical preparedness can mean that fatigue arrives sooner, and as fatigue accumulates, the risk of sustaining certain injuries may increase.

There is also no time for the players to work on this during the season. Once the Premier League season begins there is little room to catch up. The non-stop nature of the football season means that training time naturally decreases as match preparation takes priority. That means players who miss significant portions of pre-season may have to build the physical qualities they would normally develop in July and early August while simultaneously competing in one of the most demanding leagues in world football.

What is especially worrying is players like Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice and William Saliba will all miss key aspects of preseason and will have limited hours of preparation in comparison to others, yet they are the key players with major injury issues. This could make them all at a higher risk of an in season injury. 

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow