Bukayo Saka was forced off after barely ten minutes of the Champions League draw with Bayern Munich on 21 October, clutching the top of his leg. Three weeks on, Arsenal have not just survived his absence. They have pulled six points clear at the top of the Premier League, and the gap is still growing.
Mikel Arteta confirmed it as a quad injury straight away and did not try to dress up how serious it looked. "A player that has to come off with a really sharp pain is never good news," he said at the time. "It does not look good at all." Saka is still nowhere near a first team return. Arteta told reporters last week that his captain in waiting would remain sidelined for several more weeks yet, that he could begin some work on the grass once the international break arrives, and that the club has no interest in setting a deadline that might pile on pressure. Saka will also miss England's November fixtures as a result.
For a title challenger, losing a player of Saka's importance for an extended stretch is normally the kind of setback that gets talked about for months, usually in the context of what went wrong. Instead, it has coincided with Arsenal playing some of their most assured football of the season.
Four games, four wins, no sign of a dip
Four days after that setback in Munich, Arsenal beat Everton 2-0 at the Emirates, with two centre backs doing the damage: Ezri Konsa headed in his first goal for the club and Gabriel added the second on the afternoon he made his 200th Premier League appearance. A fortnight after that came the kind of result Arsenal fans had been waiting years for, a 1-0 win away at Liverpool, their first league victory at Anfield since 2012. In midweek, with six changes made from that Liverpool side, they went to Slavia Prague and won 2-1 to stay unbeaten in the Champions League, Noni Madueke opening the scoring inside ten minutes before Viktor Gyokeres added a second. Then on Saturday, Martin Odegaard's low finish was enough to see off a stubborn Hull City at the Emirates and move Arsenal six points clear at the Premier League summit.
None of those four results came easily, and that is rather the point. Arsenal have found a way to win ugly against Hull, win record breaking away from home against Liverpool, and rotate heavily in Europe without losing momentum, all without the player most would have nominated as irreplaceable a month ago.
The deputies who made it look routine
A lot of the credit belongs to the players who have been asked to fill the gap. Madueke has taken his opportunity in the games where Saka would ordinarily start, scoring in Prague and pushing his case for more regular involvement. Gyokeres, so often the subject of debate about whether he or Kai Havertz should lead the line, has chipped in with goals of his own when given the nod. Mikel Merino has continued to offer Arteta a midfielder capable of playing further forward when the situation demands it. Even in defence, where Konsa and Gabriel both scored against Everton, Arsenal have found goals from places that would not usually be asked to provide them.
That depth has mattered just as much off the pitch as on it. Arteta has been careful throughout Saka's absence not to talk about his forward's recovery in terms of fixed weeks or firm promises, repeatedly stressing that the medical staff will be allowed to manage the injury on their own timeline rather than one dictated by the fixture list. It is a markedly different tone to the alarm that followed the initial scan, when the early suggestion was that Saka could be out for as long as two months. Three weeks in, nothing about his recovery has been rushed, and nothing about Arsenal's results has suffered for it either.
A gap that has opened from both ends
Some of the six point cushion is down to what has happened elsewhere. Manchester City, who were level with Arsenal at the top when Saka first went down, have since lost three Premier League games in a row, a run that has dropped them to second and handed Arsenal daylight at the summit that looked unthinkable a month ago. That is a story in its own right and one for another day, but it is worth saying plainly that Arsenal have not simply inherited this lead by default. They have won every game they have played since City's slump began, scoring freely and defending well across both competitions, while missing the one player most clubs would build their entire attack around.
It also leaves Arsenal in an unusual position heading into the international break. Normally a club missing their best attacker would be desperate for games to stop coming so thick and fast, hoping for time to let an injury heal without the pressure of a results table watching every selection decision. Arsenal get that pause now anyway, with Saka set to use the fortnight to progress his rehabilitation away from matchday scrutiny, and with the club already well clear of the chasing pack by the time he gets there.
What happens when he comes back
The obvious question is what Arsenal do when Saka is finally available again, whenever that turns out to be. A front line that has coped without him by sharing goals around hardly needs fixing, and Arteta will have a selection headache of his own choosing once his captain is fit to be considered. The more interesting question, in some ways, is what this run says about a squad that two seasons ago might have wobbled the moment one of its best players went down. Arsenal have been here before, falling agonisingly short in previous title races partly because the depth around their best players was not quite there when it mattered. This time, with their most important creative outlet missing for the best part of a month and counting, they have simply kept winning.
Whether that proves to be the difference between going close again and actually getting it done this season will not be known for months yet. What is already clear is that six points clear at the top, unbeaten in nine matches across all competitions and still waiting for one of their best players to return, Arsenal are giving every indication that last season's near miss taught them something. The rest of the division will be hoping Saka's recovery takes rather longer than Arteta would like.
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