By Tony Attwood

According to an article in Sports Mole today, Arsenal have a dozen players who are now likely or certain to miss the League Cup game against Southampton on 4 April.    And just pondering that article, it came to me that although I have seen Arsenal injury lists get quite enlarged before, I don’t think I have actually seen a list of a dozen players, each of whom might have expected to be either playing or at the very least on the bench, being ruled out for injury.

The list, of course, means that the game in the League Cup quarter finals will be Southampton v Arsenal Reserves, and so will be a measure of Arsenal’s back-up qualities.

But it comes at a time when Southampton have just gone 14 games in the league and FA Cup without defeat, so this one against members of Arsenal’s second and third team squads is looking easier for them by the day.

I’ll take a more in-depth look shortly, but one can only hope that at some stage Arsenal’s management does wake up to the fact that allowing players to go off for internationals whenever called up most certainly does...