Arsenal - the most injury-prone club in the Premier League

Arsenal are the most injury-prone club in the Premier League – with Mesut Ozil's knee ligament damage the 890th separate injury they have had since 2002.

In research that won't surprise long-suffering Gunners fans, specialist website premierinjuries.com have gone through every pulled muscle and broken leg over the past dozen years and revealed that Arsene Wenger's men have suffered an injury nearly every five days and 100 more different knocks than their closest 'challengers', Manchester United.

Ozil, a World Cup winner with Germany, has been ruled out for up to 12 weeks with a partial knee ligament tear sustained in Sunday's 2-0 defeat against Chelsea.

He is one of eight Arsenal players currently unavailable for the first-team alongside Olivier Giroud, Mathieu Debuchy, Aaron Ramsey, Theo Walcott, Serge Gnabry, Yaya Sanogo, Mikel Arteta and David Ospina.

Laurent Koscielny was on Thursday sent home by France following an injury scare and may also be unavailabe for Arsenal's game against Hull on October.

Wenger has ordered an investigation into the number of injuries his side have had recently. There was particular bewilderment how influential midfielder Aaron Ramsey could have sustained a hamstring problem after last month's draw with Spurs having been trained lightly and rested from other games.

The Arsenal manager revealed: 'We are getting things together, getting a report on all the different opinions – what happened to him, because it’s a real concern.'

But the underlying statistics hint at a longer-term problem at the club. Since they won the Double in 2002, Arsenal have picked up nearly two fresh injuries a week during season-time with some of their stars particularly affected, notably Walcott, Jack Wilshere, Tomas Rosicky and Abou Diaby.

Their total number of injuries, 890, compares unfavourably to other clubs over the same time period. Manchester United have had 794, Tottenham 788, Everton 666, Chelsea 622, Manchester City 596, Aston Villa 578 and Liverpool 553.

While Wenger is keen to improve the injury situation, he and Arsenal would argue that some of the more serious problems have been unavoidable.


Credit: Joe Bernstein/SportsMail