Arsenal have a self-inflicted crisis surrounding their own captain. So why did Arsene Wenger hand the armband to injured Per Mertesacker?

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There was more bad news for Arsenal at the weekend. They lost their captain to injury, probably until January.

Yet that isn't the entire story. Bizarrely, the injury came before the captaincy. The player Arsene Wenger named as leader of his team, a team that has ambitions to win Arsenal's first title since 2004, was already injured. And not a little niggle, either. Per Mertesacker has a serious knee problem that will keep him out, in all likelihood, until January. 

Mertesacker will have turned 32 by the time he gets back, so who knows how complete his recovery will be, having missed pre-season? Who knows whether he will need further nursing, and gentle marshalling through the vital second half of the campaign, rather than a blood-and-thunder return to the fray? Sometimes, there is no harder person in football to understand than Arsene Wenger.

Petr Cech (left) was Arsenal's captain for the 4-3 defeat by Liverpool on Sunday but the man handed that role on a full-time basis is Per Mertesacker, who has a long-term injury

Arsene Wenger's decision to hand Mertesacker the captaincy is hard to fathom

It was July 26 when news broke of Mertesacker's knee injury and August 13 when Wenger announced via official club media that he would be Arsenal's captain this season. That is almost three weeks to come up with the name – any name – of a player who could lead the club this season. It is not as if there are no other candidates. Indeed, Wenger named three in his announcement. 'In Per's absence it will be taken by the assistants,' Wenger explained. 'One of them will be Laurent Koscielny, also Santi Cazorla – the experienced players – and Petr Cech, maybe.'

So why not make one of them the captain, and have Mertesacker as an assistant instead? Perhaps Wenger does not like goalkeepers to skipper, maybe he feels Cech – Danny Welbeck aside, the only Arsenal player to win a Premier League title, four in fact – could not be as influential from his position. And he could be right; but he can't be any less influential than a player who won't be on the pitch until January, a player in the stands, a player exiled in rehabilitation when the work on the training field is being done.

Jose Mourinho discovered Paul Pogba was suspended for Manchester United's opening game with Bournemouth and brutally dismissed talk of him before the game. 'I forget about Paul for a few days,' he said. 'I do not speak about suspended players or injured players.' Brian Clough felt the same. Maybe the memories of his own curtailed career were too painful, but he would banish injured players from hanging around first-team training, certainly those on crutches. 

Laurent Koscielny (left) and Santi Cazorla are vice-captains but could have had the top job

Wenger, by contrast, has appointed a player distanced from the action as his captain. Think of the leader of last season's title winners, Wes Morgan, or the year before, John Terry. Morgan played all 38 league games for Leicester; Terry did the same for Chelsea. They led by example; they led with sheer presence. And yes, a football captain is not like a captain in cricket. He isn't about tactics and decision-making; but he is the manager's voice on the field. Look at Sir Alex Ferguson's captains down the years, or the men that led the greatest Wenger teams at Arsenal – and don't let anyone ever tell you it is unimportant.

'Per is a very respected figure in the dressing room, is loved and is also very demanding,' Wenger said. 'I think it is absolutely natural to be him.' 

But it isn't. It's completely unnatural. The natural appointment would have been one of the other names he mentioned, Koscielny or Cazorla. How much better it would have been before Sunday's game with Liverpool to announce that Koscielny, one of the best central defenders in the league, is the new captain – and, by the way, he was going to be rested on Sunday, but he knows we need him, and he's playing. 

Arsenal's defence, minus Mertesacker, could not contain the likes of Sadio Mane (right)

Instead, Koscielny sat in the stands at the Emirates as, greatly weakened by injury, Wenger sent boys out to do a man's job, and went 4-1 down at home to Liverpool. They pulled two goals back to affect respectability, but there was none, really. Arsenal got back in the game because they had no option but to throw the kitchen sink at it once the fourth went in and Liverpool, ahead so convincingly, didn't really know whether to press on for a ridiculous winning margin, or sit back and keep what they had, so ended up doing neither.

Of course, as ever at Arsenal, good times are around the corner. The arrival of Valencia central defender Shkodran Mustafi is imminent, but will he be instantly ready for the intensity of Premier League football – Arsenal's next match is Leicester away, on Saturday – or will he need time to adapt? Manchester United bought a centre half from La Liga, too, and Eric Bailly looked excellent against Bournemouth – but he was signed on June 8, and has had all summer to prepare for the English game. Mustafi may be thrown in at the deep end, against the unique challenge of containing Jamie Vardy. It doesn't mean he can't do it; but it won't be easy.

And so here we are again. Another season of simmering discontent in north London. The first game of the campaign included the traditional airing of that Arsenal standard 'You Don't Know What You're Doing', after Liverpool's fourth went in, followed by another crowd-pleaser 'Spend Some F****** Money' and boos at the conclusion. The debates rarely change either: why didn't they buy, why no new striker, why no new centre half? Missing out to Leicester last season should have been the loudest alarm call, and everyone agrees Arsenal are close to being title challengers. Yet as their rivals have moved to ensure no sucker from outside the elite gets an even break again, Arsenal have dawdled as the sharp-elbowed bustle by. Now they have even built-in an injury crisis around the captain. Why would a brilliant manager like Wenger do that?

Mertesacker's predecessor was Mikel Arteta. He was plagued by injury in his last two seasons, didn't start a league game in 2015-16 and just six the season before, but Wenger considered him a big presence in the dressing-room and an important personality at the club. Where is he now? He sits beside Pep Guardiola on the bench at Manchester City. When he retired at the end of last season, all the attributes that made him a worthy – if absent – leader of men, were not enough to secure him a job at Arsenal. So, for the third year running, Arsenal will play the majority of the season without their captain. The wound this time, however, is entirely self-inflicted. It makes no sense. 

Wenger lost his first big managerial confrontation of the season, against Jurgen Klopp