It is hard to see a player fall time and time again into the depressing cycle of injury, rehabilitation, depression and injury once again. For 32 year old Spanish international, Santi Cazorla, the year 2017 would be one he will never want to remember as it was the beginning of potentially, the end of his footballing career.

The former Malaga man has been out injured since October 2016 as he has suffered a series of nasty injuries. Cazorla is a player that is much loved at the club and even fans if other clubs as his ability, cheerful nature and overall commitment to the cause of the Arsenal project.

News emerged that the player has undergone his 10th surgery on his ankle, that may probably mean he will also miss the whole of this year due to injury. On his day, Cazorla is one of the best central midfielders in the world as his skill set of vision, creativity, passing and finishing are up there with the very best. He has had to graft skin from his arm to add to his feet, as he lost 8cm due to a gangrene infection, but his spirit is what is keeping hope alive that one day, we would still see this brilliant footballer play the football in the way only he can do.

The ambidextrous footballer is one of the players that makes Arsenal tick, as he offers balance to the middle of the park that has been missing since his absence. While the club has since moved on in his absence, what he brings to the pitch is one that the club can still benefit from as his leadership, experience and ability are needed to lead the current crop of players to a new era.

The player was emotional in an interview he had last year, as he spoke of the torment of not playing, the agony of rehabilitation and the feeling that everything he does to get back to the pitch will still end up on the treatment table. Arsenal have not been overly blessed with the avoidance of these kind of scenarios which has led to questions about the club’s medical department.

The likes of Wilshere and Abou Diaby at one point or the other have always struggled to maintain permanent fitness, which fans hope don’t happen to Cazorla. Arsenal fans have taken to the player who joined in the summer of 2012, as his displays were unexpected of a player that was not on the radar of the big clubs.

His contract at Arsenal expires this summer, but one can’t begrudge the Arsenal hierarchy if they don’t want to offer him new terms. Afterall, the club have paid his wages despite not playing for about 15 months, which in itself is a commendable fact in this world of impatient club owners and administrators. If he leaves Arsenal, he will leave as a player that gave so much, but was betrayed by his own body.

If his latest return doesn’t happen and he suffers a setback, he should be thinking of retirement. He will be missed, but as a wise man once said, “The best things in life are on the other side of fear”. It would be sad to see him go out like that.

Guest post by Mark Weasley from Retro Football News

The ball is in the air and it reaches Nacho Monreal’s path… The fullback sees Santi Cazorla and decides to nod the ball to his teammate’s direction. It looks simple enough, all Cazorla has to do is to pluck the ball from the air and get on with things. There’s Alexis Sanchez just ahead of him and Mathieu Flamini just a couple of meters away on the right. Simple enough yeah?

Then there’s Norwich’s captain, Gary O’Neil. A decent bloke that can never hurt a fly. As a combative midfielder, he has only one thing on his mind – to win the ball and maybe to instigate an attack. It’s going to be a ’50-50′ challenge as it’s called in this part of the world.

Both players go for the ball and bam! Poor ol’ Santi gets a whack on his knee. As you would expect, the diminutive midfielder hits the deck and he’s clearly in pain. Our lead physio, Colin Lewin, rushes onto the pitch to do his thang’. Arsene Wenger doesn’t say that he’s obstructing the game or the kinda rubbish you’d hear from that bloke whose team gives more three points to away teams than the amount of times Luis Suarez scores.

Lewin isn’t Clark Kent and he can’t see that Cazorla has ruptured some ligaments but he gives the midfielder the go-ahead to continue the game. Remember that we had already lost Laurent Koscielny to what seemed to be like a hip injury during the game. Aaron Ramsey was still on the pitch so if Lewin had declared that Cazorla wasn’t fit to continue the game, we would have seen a tactical shift with Ramsey deployed in the middle and either Joel Campbell or Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain coming into the pitch.

Shortly afterwards, our talisman, Alexis Sanchez aggravates his hamstring injury and Campbell comes on. Cazorla is still on the pitch. The player doesn’t make things better for himself. All he had to do was to do an Arteta, you know, sit his ass on the turf and signal to the bench that he’s done with things on the pitch. But like Alexis the Lion, Cazorla continues to play through the pain barrier as the game progressed.

Ramsey was having a shitefest on the right wing and Wenger decided that he had seen enough, so he removes the Welshman and brings on the Ox. All three subs used with 18 minutes plus stoppage time to spare. Cazorla is set to finish the game with a potential knee injury. It’s not as if he was looking in any form of discomfort, and to me, that’s the scary part.

In Arsene Wenger’s post-match press conference, he was obviously asked about the injury situation of his squad,

“In the first half he [Cazorla] got a kick on the knee and it got worse. I don’t know if he has jaded his knee ligament or he it was just a kick on the nerve but the worrying thing was it got worse during the game”

Oh! So he noticed!

The media started carrying all sorts of info about Cazorla’s injury and we as fans didn’t know what to believe again. We all knew one thing – Cazorla was not going to play against Sunderland and when Arsene Wenger was asked again in the pre-match press conference for the Sunderland game,

“As for Cazorla we don’t know until he sees a specialist. There is no news on that.”

Thankfully, Arsenal saw out the threat of Sunderland in Cazorla’s absence as Ramsey played in the deep-lying midfield role and he scored a goal and created an assist.

Up until his injury at Norwich, Cazorla was ever-present in the Arsenal squad, making 18 appearances this season. He has missed only one game this season, which was the game after the loss to Chelsea where he earned his first red card in Arsenal colors for two bookable offences. In his first season at Arsenal, he played 49 games, amassed 46 games in his second season, his growing importance and good fitness saw him play 53 games last season which essentially means that he has played 165 games in just four seasons for Arsenal – 15 games short of all Abou Diaby’s appearances in 10 seasons with the Gunners.

Accordingly to Sky Sports, Santi Cazorla has undergone surgery on his knee and he’s set to be out for at least four months. Wenger revealed that the player made the decision himself to go under the knife to fix his knee,

“Santi wanted to have a chance to come back quickly so he didn’t want to last too long for 25 opinions and he decided to go straight away. The guy said, ‘look it’s a clear case, it’s a rupture of the external knee ligament’. And he said ‘Okay, let’s do it straight away’.”

With Cazorla out for a long while, Ramsey will get an extended run at his favored central midfield role and he’s relishing the opportunity,

“I’m still a bit short of fitness and it will take me a few games to get back into it but I’m pleased today with my overall contribution. I prefer to be back in the middle of the pitch, that is where I feel more comfortable and feel like I play my best football – to grab a goal and get an assist was good for me as well.

“I wish Santi a speedy recovery, and Francis as well, we have been hit hard by injuries this season but it gives players the opportunities to take.

“I have made no secret that I prefer to play in the middle and hopefully now I can stay there. My performance today was good and hopefully I can keep building on that now to play where I prefer to play.”

Competition for places is stiff at Arsenal and Ramsey knows that he needs to build on what was a good performance against Sunderland.

I wish Cazorla a speedy recovery but we will have to soldier on in his absence.

Sayonara

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