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Is Arsenal's title challenge over after Kai Havertz's season-ending injury?
Arsenal was already struggling to keep its head above water on the injury front and with the January transfer window slammed shut, there was no margin for error.
But the football gods have decided that the Gunners haven't endured enough back luck this season with Kai Havertz, on Arsenal's trip to Dubia which was a chance to rest the legs and recharge the batteries, suffering a season-ending hamstring injury.
This now leaves Mikel Arteta with no fit striker to select for the rest of the season, which includes 14 Premier League games and a handful of Champions League games too.
Just seven points behind Liverpool after the Reds' draw with Everton, it was already looming as a tough task to reel in Arne Slot's team. Now, they've just gotten an almighty break from the football gods as another player has been added to Arsenal's treatment room.
But while most see Havertz's injury as the final nail in the coffin of the Gunners' league title challenge, ESPN's Craig Burley, somehow isn't ruling Arsenal out of it...yet.
"No, I don’t think it’s the end,” Burley said on ESPN FC. “But it's made it incredibly more difficult from a squad perspective because guys that might have been filling in for a Bukayo Saka who is injured or a Martinelli who is injured, there’s other people that are going to have to be shuffled around. The pieces of the jigsaw keep moving. There’s no fresh pieces coming in and that’ s going to make chasing Liverpool down even more difficult. They have to be ruing now the fact, not in January, they did not go out in the summer for whatever reason and bolster that front line.”
We admire Burley's glass half full approach, but the Gunners now have to rely on the likes of Raheem Sterling, Leandro Trossard and Ethan Nwaneri to score enough goals to propel Arsenal's title charge.
It won't be over until the Gunners are mathematically out, but this feels like the final dagger into a season that needs to be fired into the sun.
At no point did the Gunners get a decent chunk of the campaign injury-free and yes, injuries are a part of football, but the sheer number that Arsenal has had to deal with is shocking.
Yes, they made their bed by not adding to the squad in January, and perhaps Havertz's injury is a nasty little game the football gods are playing with the Gunners because not only did they look their last remnants of a striker, but they also lost their last hope of clinching the Premier League title.