www.wakaticket.com –

With the benefit of hindsight, Mikel Arteta’s response to a question before Arsenal’s victory over Everton last month about how the forthcoming international break might affect his squad was revealing. “We have really good communication with most of them,” Arteta replied when asked whether he was planning to speak to the various international managers that were expected to call up his players. “We’ll wait and see how everybody is and have those conversations and make the right decisions.”

Considering that Arsenal were still pursuing an unprecedented quadruple at the time, was this the most nervous he had ever felt going into an international break? “It’s a period that I don’t enjoy a lot,” admitted Arteta. “Especially when we have 18, 19 players playing. And especially with what happened in our recent history with very important players. But that is part of the calendar and we have to accept that.”

In the aftermath of Arsenal’s defeat to Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final at Wembley, it didn’t take long for the withdrawals to begin. First William Saliba pulled out of France’s squad with a left ankle injury despite playing the whole game at Wembley and he was swiftly followed by Jurriën Timber, who has been struggling with a groin issue and wasn’t part of the matchday squad against City.

In the next 24 hours, Gabriel Magalhães – who would have been at the forefront of Arteta’s mind when referring to “our recent history” after the defender suffered a groin injury in a friendly win over Senegal at the Emirates in November that kept him out until the new year – withdrew from Brazil’s squad as Leandro Trossard did the same from Belgium’s. Eberechi Eze was also forced to excuse himself from England duty due to the calf problem that ruled him out of the Carabao Cup final.

Arsenal had been hopeful that captain Martin Ødegaard – who missed a large portion of last season after injuring ankle ligaments on international duty – could return against City after a persistent knee issue but he didn’t feature and subsequently pulled out of Norway’s squad.

Arteta’s efforts to protect his players as they prepare for a demanding run-in that will define Arsenal’s campaign have brought comparisons to the Sir Alex Ferguson era at Manchester United. He famously described internationals as “a waste of time” and Wayne Rooney revealed last year that Ferguson insisted his players featured for “no more than 45 minutes”.

Yet Arteta’s worst fears appeared to have come true last Friday evening when Noni Madueke and Piero Hincapié both limped out of their respective friendlies for England and Ecuador. Madueke was spotted leaving Wembley in a knee brace while Hincapié had to determine the severity of a suspected muscle injury. Both are expected to be ruled out of Saturday evening’s trip to face Southampton in the FA Cup but Arsenal are hopeful that they could return sooner rather than later.

Given the furious reaction there has been to the large number of withdrawals from fans of some rival clubs, all eyes will be on how many of the others who pulled out of international squads this week will feature at St Mary’s. Thomas Tuchel was adamant that Bukayo Saka – another with a history of picking up injuries on international duty – and Declan Rice had genuine issues and “wanted desperately to play to get the narrative straight” after being given the first week off from England’s training camp. The reality is their extraordinary workload for club and country over the last three seasons since the last World Cup means both could really do with a prolonged rest before the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final against Sporting Lisbon next week in Portugal.

The same can be said for Martín Zubimendi, who became the 11th Arsenal player to withdraw from an international squad on Monday due to “pain in his left knee”. The Spain midfielder has been on the pitch for more minutes than any other Arsenal player in the Premier League this season, just edging out Rice and Timber. Arteta has so far proved reluctant to allow Christian Nørgaard to deputise for Zubimendi in the biggest games, with the experienced Denmark international who was a second-half substitute in their World Cup playoff defeat to the Czech Republic on penalties still yet start a top-flight match since joining from Brentford last summer.

At least no one could accuse Viktor Gyökeres of not being committed to Sweden’s cause. His hat-trick against Ukraine set up a playoff final against Poland and the £64m striker scored a dramatic late winner in Solna that should provide a timely shot of confidence for what lies ahead. By contrast, Riccardo Calafiori will return to north London after playing 120 minutes in the defeat to Bosnia and Herzegovina bruised by Italy’s third successive failure to qualify for the World Cup.

Having already played 50 matches in a marathon season and with potentially another 15 to come should they go all the way to the final in the FA Cup and Champions League, it will continue to be a delicate balancing act for Arteta even if he has one of the deepest squads ever assembled in the Premier League. As they deal with the psychological blow of again missing out on a first major trophy since 2020 against their closest rivals in the title race, he will hope Arsenal are ready to hit the ground running.