Mikel Arteta Admits Major Change Is Possible to Keep Arsenal Title Bid on Track

It’s threatening to be a case of déjà vu for Arsenal in this season’s Premier League.

Mikel Arteta has been hamstrung by hamstrings this season. | Vince Mignott/MB Media/Getty Images

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta opened himself up to the possibility of changing his team’s pre-match warmups—or ditching them entirely—after losing a player to injury for the fourth time this season.

Riccardo Calafiori was named in the XI to take on Wigan Athletic in the FA Cup on Sunday afternoon only to pull out a matter of minutes before kick off. It was the second time this season that Calafiori has fallen foul of the pre-match buildup, which has also claimed William Saliba and Bukayo Saka this season.

Ahead of Wednesday’s clash with Wolverhampton Wanderers, Arteta was asked if this recurring issue was under review. “Yeah, yeah, big time,” he assured assembled reporters.

“They were very different. The first one was Willy [Saliba] when he rolled his ankle against Liverpool. Then we had two incidents with Riccy in the warmup in a really similar way. The other one was Bukayo after he rested in midweek, he didn’t play against Kairat, and then against Leeds he gets an injury. Very unusual. Probably happened once or twice in six years I have been here and it happened four times there.

“So obviously we are looking at it.

Riccardo Calafiori has struggled with injuries recently. | Joe Prior/Visionhaus/Getty Images

“On Willy’s one, very difficult to see. Sometimes as well you want to try and test a player before to see if they are ready and the warmup is another opportunity to do it. Bukayo’s is very random because he never gave any symptoms or signals away that this could happen in the warmup. It is what it is, we have to learn.”

Arteta admitted that he now approaches pre-match preparations with a sense of dread. “When I am in the office and the moment I hear my door, somebody steps in, I am like No, please because it is a moment that is very tricky.”

“To change that sometimes is tricky,” Arteta warned. “It is a really good area to have a look. What would happen if we don’t do the warmup? Because then. At half time, we go and sit almost for 15 minutes and then go full gas in the second half. Maybe it is something to think about.”

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What Is the Point of a Pre-Match Warmup?

Arsenal have come under scrutiny for their warmups. | David Price/Arsenal FC/Getty Images

The clue is in the name: warming up your muscles. Football is a game of explosive movements which, if conducted with a cold soft tissue structure, dramatically increases the risk of strains to muscles, tendons and ligaments.

For Arteta, this ritual was as much about mental preparation as physical: “I was a player as well and we like certain routines and that’s the way you tell your body, It is coming, it is coming, it is coming.”

Not every player was so fond of it.

Legendary Italian midfielder Andrea Pirlo had a fierce disdain for the entire practice. “One part of my job I’ll never learn to love is the pre-match warmup,” he wrote in his wonderfully witty autobiography I Think Therefore I Play. “I hate it with every fibre of my being. It actually disgusts me. It’s nothing but masturbation for conditioning coaches, their way of enjoying themselves at the players’ expense.”

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Arsenal’s Warmup Casualties

Player	Match	Subsequent Time Out
William Saliba	Liverpool (Aug. 31)	3 games (16 days)
Riccardo Calafiori	Brighton (Dec. 27)	9 games (32 days)
Bukayo Saka	Leeds (Jan. 31)	3 games (13 days)
Riccardo Calafiori	Wigan (Feb. 15)	TBD

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Injuries Threaten to Undermine Arsenal Once Again

Mikel Arteta’s side have been beset by injuries. | Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC/Getty Images

Arsenal’s injuries have unhelpfully arrived in waves. “Before it was the strikers, then it was the defenders, now it’s the midfielders,” Arteta lamented this weekend.

Arteta revealed that Calafiori will be fit for Wednesday’s trip to Molineux, leaving the treatment room stockpiled with midfielders Mikel Merino, Martin Ødegaard, Kai Havertz and Max Dowman.

The impressive breadth and depth of Arsenal’s squad has held firm long enough to maintain a four-point lead at the Premier League summit, but Arteta is well aware that those who have somehow avoided fitness issues can only hold out for so long. “We need some players back and fit and to give us as well not only numbers but different options in relation to the opponents that we have,” the increasingly beleaguered manager fretted. “So the quicker they are the better.”

The Gunners have trodden this unwanted path before. The collapse of their 2022–23 title charge was inextricably tied to Saliba’s back injury with three months of the campaign remaining. Having averaged 2.4 points per game with the French centre back, Arsenal slumped to 1.6 to slip behind Manchester City.

Arsenal flailed behind Liverpool last term after losing all their striker options as well as Gabriel Magalhães and Calafiori for the final few months of the campaign.

Those scars are still fresh and any chance to avoid the same devastating fate is at the forefront of Arteta’s priorities. Only time will tell if sending his players out for a Premier League fixture without any warmup is the best way to avoid injuries.

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