These days at Arsenal it seems that there is an annual injury that effectively rules out a star player for either half a season or the whole season. Samir Nasri is the latest casualty in the list of players that have been forced onto the sidelines at Arsenal recently with reports suggesting that he could be out for up to four months; Although Arsene Wenger has recently calmed nerves by claiming that Nasri’s injury is not as serious as first thought. The problem is these freak injury’s put further doubt into your mind over whether Arsenal are capable of having a squad remaining injury free at the start of the season.

You may argue that injuries are all apart of the game and Arsenal are not the only club to have gotten rotten luck over the years. Chelsea have had long term injuries to Michael Essien and Joe Cole with the latter missing most of last season and Everton have had it equally as bad as Arsenal with key injuries to Mikel Arteta, Phil Jagielka, Victor Anichebe and Yakubu along with Louis Saha’s constant niggles.

But it seems that every year without fail you can guarantee that a top Arsenal player will get injured. For years Arsenal fans have been frustrated with Robin Van Persie’s frequent injuries that have hampered his Arsenal career. Until last season it seemed unlikely Van Persie would stay injury free for a full season. Such bad luck has meant that whenever he would get on a hot streak it would be inevitable that an injury was waiting to occur around the corner. Looking at his statistics it is shocking that in the 2007-2008 season he only managed 23 appearances in all competitions with a mare 15 league appearances.

Tomáš Rosický’s injury has been surrounded by mystery. He was first injured in the opening nine minutes of the FA Cup tie against Newcastle on January 2008 and was only expected to be out for a couple weeks. Weeks then turned into months with further setbacks taking place which ruled him out of UEFA 2008 and the start of the 2008-2009 season. Setting an initial return date of September, several delays insured and eventually he missed the whole season. The manner of this injury has been crazy to say the least. I have lost count of the amount of times I have heard false dawns from Arsene Wenger that he was due to return and there were serious concerns that his football career could be over.

Add in the continued deception towards the return dates of William Gallas and Gaël Clichy towards the end of last season and this raises serious questions over how injuries are treated at the club. Some of these injuries could be pin pointed to players rushing back from injury without being allowed the proper time to heal while other reasons could be blamed on the amount of games they are playing over the season.

If those aren’t the reasons perhaps the blame could be shifted towards the scouts, are they looking at injury prone players? A more realistic analysis of the situation is many of the players that have signed for Arsenal have no history of being injury prone prior to joining the club. Rosický’, Van Persie, Eduardo and Nasri have all had consistent seasons with their previous clubs although Nasri suffered from a viral meningitis illness during his time with Marseille.

Maybe we have to come to the conclusion that Arsenal are very unlucky when it comes to injury’s. The cruciate ligament injury suffered by Robert Pirès, Diaby’s broken and dislocated ankle caused by Dan Smith’s two-footed challenge, Eduardo’s broken left fibula and open dislocation of his ankle from Martin Taylor’s Poor tackle and now the fractured right fibula Nasri suffered during pre season training have all been unfortunate injury’s and such is the luck of the Arsenal don’t be surprised to see more gruelling injuries added to the list.