Arteta Hits Out at the Premier League Schedule

Arteta Hits Out at the Premier League Schedule, After Injuries to.....

Aishik Das

Published - Dec 04, 2025, 04:54 PM

4 min

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Arteta Hits Out at the Premier League Schedule Amid Injury Concerns

Summary

Mikel Arteta has criticised the Premier League scheduling after injuries to Declan Rice and Cristhian Moquera after their win against Brentford.
The two players join the Arsenal injury list, which also includes the likes of Gabriel, Saliba, Trossard, and Havertz.

Arsenal have been in fine form this season, with ten wins out of their first 14 games of the 2025/26 English Premier League. Mikel Arteta and co. have displayed an excellent brand of football so far, combining both attacking prowess and defensive resilience to churn out results from matches. They are undoubtedly one of the best teams in the Premier League so far, and will look to keep it that way. However, they have been dealing with an injury crisis recently, where players like Gabriel Magalhaes, Leandro Trossard, and William Saliba have been sidelined.

Earlier, Martin Odegaard, Viktor Gyokeres, and Gabriel Martinelli were unavailable too, but have made a swift comeback to the squad. Meanwhile, fresh injury scares of Cristhian Mosquera and Declan Rice, who has been the best midfielder in the Premier League currently, have left Mikel Arteta frustrated with the scheduling of the Premier League fixtures. The Arsenal boss has recently lashed out at the same after the match against Brentford. Here's all you need to know from the Arteta press conference.

What did Mikel Arteta Say?

Mikel Arteta press conference was a mixed one, where he was satisfied with the performance of Arsenal, but was frustrated by the no. of games they have to play in what seems to be a tight schedule. Arteta revealed that new Arsenal injuries include Declan Rice and Cristhian Mosquera, who sustained injuries during the 2-0 win against the Bees. Mosquera had to be taken off just minutes before halftime, while Rice came off with a calf problem in the 83rd minute.

Obviously it's never good news. Declan had to come off. We have to see tomorrow what he's got. Mosquera is the other one that is out. Obviously we have big Gabi (Gabriel) and Willy (Saliba) out as well. So we have to adapt. It's been a theme of this season.

Here's the full Arteta press conference where he addressed all the issues.

(Video courtesy: YouTube/@BeanymanSports)

Speaking of the scheduling, the Gunners boss made it clear that his players are not machines and they, too, need time to recover. The congested schedule is not only hurting his team, but every other team in Europe.

Now we play Wednesday night and we have to play Saturday morning as well. So we can play minutes, but if they can please give us just a little bit more time to recover and to make the well-being of these players a little bit easier, that would be great. Give us another day, especially the teams that are playing so much in Europe. To everybody in general, I think we can do that because we're going to benefit from that. We've never had such a schedule at every level, not only in the Premier League, but every competition internationally as well. So we need to try to do that, please. It's not an argument, I think it's common sense. I think it's not at some point this becomes too much, you know, and the players are not machines. But we have to try to do that when we can.

The number of games that are being played in a season is truly worrisome at this point. Players are playing almost 60+ games per season, increasing the risk of injuries, which could potentially ruin their careers. We can see that many players are having recurring injuries even after recovering from one. It all boils down to the fact that the scheduling of the footballing season needs to be more systematic. Arteta press conference once again highlights the need for the hour as Arsenal injuries have been on the rise. If it isn't followed, the future might be worrisome for the players.