I have waited for the dust to settle before penning this article. I hope that the various pundits on this, and other, sites have now calmed down sufficiently to view the season just passed somewhat more rationally than seemed apparent when emotions were running high in recent weeks.

I believe this was actually not a bad season at all. We improved significantly over last season, never looked like finishing outside the top four and were even right in the mix for the league title up until the fifth last game – Sp*rs away. And, during that game, from the 20th to the 68th minute, we were without arguably our SIX best players injured (Vermaelen, Gallas, Song, Fabregas, Van Persie and Arshavin), which I will come back to.

In the Champions League, we comfortably reached the quarter finals where we lost to possibly the best team in the world – having given them a scare.

In the FA Cup, we folded in the 4th round. However given that our draw would have been: West Ham (A), Stoke (A), Man City (A), Chelsea (A), Aston Villa (N) and Portsmouth (N) I suggest that even a full strength team would have been hard put to progress all the way? As we were far from full strength during this period, saving players may have made the difference against Porto? It was then very unfortunate to be drawn against Barcelona!

The League Cup once again provided good experience for our younger players. We eventually lost to Man City (A) – again, a tough draw that might even have been beyond a full strength team.

However what, to my mind, made this a good season was the number of injuries we were carrying right the way through the campaign. This season has been by far the worst for injuries I have ever known for Arsenal – and I have been a fan for 40 years - and perhaps as bad as any top flight club has ever had to endure? To back up this assertion, I have analysed the availability for league matches of our 21 leading players – on the assumption that Wenger would almost always select his strongest available squad for these games. These players would almost always be in the 18 (there were not too many occasions when we had fewer than 3 players injured!) – although I accept there may have been a handful of occasions when they were omitted despite being fit.

(Ed’s note – I can’t reproduce tables in html format, so the table that should be here is above in the image box between the first and second paragraphs)

Some notes.

- I have excluded Campbell, although, apart from a couple of minor knocks, he was generally available following his signing.

- Song and Eboue’s absences include the Africa Cup of Nations which was predictable.

- We hardly had any suspensions.

- Although the level of absence is bad enough, it should also be noted that players generally need a few games following their return to get back to their previous level.

So, I believe the question that we should be asking is not “Why was it such a disappointing season?” but “Why did we have so many injuries?” As per above, on average, 30% of our 1st team squad were unavailable at any one time.

There was an interesting interview with Colin Lewin on the club website a few weeks ago where he noted that we had 7 fractures this season (typically 1 or 2) and that we also entered a vicious circle – the more players that were injured, the more the remaining players had to play which, in turn, increased their likelihood of getting injured. He also noted that Arsenal players run further than any other team.

It is also worth noting that I believe our injury load has generally been bad for the last few seasons – but nothing quite on the scale of 2009/10?

So what specifically may be the cause?

- Our quick one-touch passing style of play: This invites late tackles. I think this is definitely a factor, but not unique to this season.

- The smaller average size of our players. This makes them less robust(?) and also invites a physical approach from the opposition. I think this is valid too but again not unique to this season. I also note that we won the fair play league – not really a good thing in my book…

- Lack of protection from referees. Contentious. Possibly true – but would not explain this exceptionally bad season as again this has been a factor for a while.

- The turf at our home stadium – do the artificial fibres reduce the give? Bernard Azulay has noted that you never see divot marks at home games… I haven’t tried to analyse where injuries are incurred (predominantly home or away?) so can’t comment on this but it could be a factor? Certainly the deterioration in our injury situation seems vaguely related to the move to the new stadium.