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Arsenal dealt cruel blow as star suffers fresh injury setback

By on March 2, 2016

santi cazorla

Sigh. It seems our title hopes have received yet another cruel injury blow with Arsene Wenger confirming that Santi Cazorla could miss the rest of the season with an Achilles injury.

Cazorla has been on the sidelines since damaging knee ligaments during our draw at Norwich City in November but returned to light training earlier this month.

The 31-year-old was expected to turn out for the under-21’s next week with the hope of Cazorla making his first team return within the next couple of weeks.

However, his comeback has now been put on hold due to a fresh Achilles injury with Arsene confirming Cazorla has been forced to stop training and they have no idea when he’ll be available again.

Wenger is quoted as saying by the Mirror:

“Santi is not doing too well. He has some Achilles problems that hold him (back). His knee is doing well but his Achilles has inflamed a little bit and we have to put him off impact.

“It is a reaction to him coming back. [Will he be back in April?] We have to see now how he responds. He had always a little tendonitis on his Achilles and we have to see how he responds to that.”

This is a devastating blow as we’ve sorely missed Cazorla’s presence over the past few months. I was hoping the Spaniard would return this month to give us a major boost during the run-in but that now looks unlikely.

Arsene was unable to say whether Santi would play again before the end of April and the Mirror suggest Cazorla is unlikely to play again this season, so we’ll now have to make-do without our most influential midfielder.

With Jack Wilshere at least another month away and The Ox also crocked for up to eight weeks, we are left with limited options in the middle of the park and it looks like Arsene is going to have to stick with the Ramsey-Coquelin combination, which clearly isn’t working right now.