Dramatic impact injuries had on Arsenal and Man City title race revealed by new stats as Man Utd among worst hit

ARSENAL players missed more than TWICE as many Premier League matches through injury than Manchester City as they blew the title race.

The Gunners finished five points off Pep Guardiola’s City but were top with only a month of the season left.

A new study has revealed the damaging impact of injuries to the North Londoners’ key players when the domestic campaign resumed after the Qatar World Cup finals.

Data provided to SunSport by PremierInjuries.com shows Arsenal had nine reported injuries from January to May, resulting in 59 GAMES missed and 415 DAYS lost to injury.

By comparison, champions City’s 14 reported injuries since the World Cup only amounted to 27 games missed and 178 days lost.

For Arsenal, the longest absence was Egyptian Mo Elneny, unavailable for 137 days and 21 league matches after undergoing knee surgery.

French centre-back William Saliba, 22, was arguably the biggest loss in terms of status as he was ruled out of 11 matches from March due to a lower back issue.

Japanese full-back Takehiro Tomiyasu did not play after a knee ligament injury in the Europa League exit to Sporting Lisbon on March 16.

Another defender Oleksandr Zinchenko missed four games across April and May due to calf and groin strains.

And Gabriel Jesus (knee), Gabriel Martinelli (ankle), Eddie Nketiah (ankle), Thomas Partey (hamstring) and Emile Smith Rowe (thigh) were also unavailable at various points.

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But at City — who claimed a third Prem crown in a row — their medical room did not have the same burden or influx of long-term problems.

For example, centre-back John Stones missed only five games across 45 days after a muscle injury and then a hamstring strain in January.

Meanwhile, Chelsea can blame their worst Prem campaign for 29 years on having the worst fitness record of the 20 top-flight clubs.

The Blues lost 16 times as they finished 12th — their lowest mark since 1993-94 — and had three managers during the 2022-23 season.

Chelsea, who axed Thomas Tuchel in September and then Graham Potter in April, had a total of 1,579 days lost to injuries last campaign — with 841 of those coming since the World Cup.

The Stamford Bridge side had 45 reported ‘time-loss’ injuries since August’s opening day — with a whopping 32 of them occurring in 2023.

Leicester, relegated to the Championship, really suffered when the season restarted after Christmas and had 23 reported injuries, which was the joint-third highest.

The injury website, founded by Ben Dinnery in 2010, records time-loss injuries when a player misses at least one match.

Several players had terrible luck, notably Nottingham Forest’s £10million summer signing Omar Richards, who never kicked a ball due to a stress fracture in a shinbone.

Wolves’ Austrian forward Sasa Kalajdzic ruptured his ACL on his September debut, a 1-0 win over Southampton.

Figures taken over the course of ten months show that hamstring issues remain the most prevalent among elite footballers.

That made for 23 per cent of all the top tier’s time-loss injuries.

And ACL issues tend to be the most severe with a ‘return to play’ time period being in the region of 275-285 days.

Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk