Noni Madueke walked out of Wembley on Friday night wearing a knee brace. He had been on the pitch for 37 minutes of a friendly against Uruguay, a match that will be completely forgotten by the time we kick off at Southampton on April 4. Nobody will remember the score. Nobody will remember who started. The only thing that will matter in eight days is whether Madueke can run.

That is what an international break looks like when you are in the middle of a title race.

Before Friday, six Arsenal players had already withdrawn from their national squads without kicking a ball in anger this window. William Saliba, who played every minute of the Carabao Cup final on March 22, was ruled out of the France squad the same evening with recurring pain in his left ankle, requiring a minimum ten days of rest. Gabriel Magalhaes, also present for the full ninety at Wembley, followed the next morning. The Brazilian Football Federation confirmed he had complained of pain in his right knee and that imaging tests had shown he was unfit to travel. Jurrien Timber withdrew from the Netherlands. Leandro Trossard withdrew from Belgium with a hip problem. Martin Odegaard was not selected by Norway at all, his knee injury having limited him severely since February. Mikel Merino, who was spotted at Wembley still on crutches from the foot surgery he underwent in January, did not even factor into Spain's thinking.

Six players. All of them significant. Most of them starters. Gone before the first whistle of the international window had been blown.

Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice had been held back from England's first game as a precaution, given additional rest days before joining the camp. They arrived on Saturday morning. By Saturday evening they were on their way back to London Colney for medical assessment. One day in camp. The FA confirmed neither would feature against Japan. Tuchel, to his credit, did not push the issue. But the fact that both needed to leave after a single day tells you everything about the physical state of this squad after eleven months of relentless football.

And then there is Madueke. Unlike the others, Madueke was fit. Fit enough to travel, fit enough to start, fit enough to take a heavy challenge from Rodrigo Aguirre in the 37th minute of a pre-tournament audition against South American opposition who, as their treatment of Saka and others has shown before, do not observe the unwritten rules about friendly-match intensity. Tuchel called the challenge "on the edge" and said he was worried. That is the England manager's problem to manage publicly. The consequences, however, belong to Arsenal.

The argument that gets made every time this happens is that international football is part of the professional game and clubs accept this when they sign players. That argument holds, just about, when we are talking about competitive qualifying matches in October. It does not hold when we are talking about pre-World Cup friendlies scheduled in the final week of March, during a Premier League title run-in, eight days before an FA Cup quarter-final and eleven days before a Champions League quarter-final first leg. England do not need Madueke to beat Uruguay in a game with no stakes. We need him to beat Southampton in one with everything at stake.

Arteta has managed this season's injury list with a composure that has been genuinely impressive. He has rotated, trusted youth, found solutions. At sixteen, Max Dowman played in an FA Cup fifth round and looked as though he belonged. The squad has depth that previous Arsenal sides could only dream of. But there is a point at which no amount of depth or tactical flexibility can absorb what this calendar keeps producing. When your centre-backs, your captain, your midfield anchor and your winger are all returning from an international break in various states of concern, the squad depth argument becomes less a comfort and more a coping mechanism.

The medical assessments will come in over the next few days. Some players will be available. Some will not. Arteta will pick a team from whoever is ready, and that team will go to St Mary's on April 4 and try to reach an FA Cup semi-final. Three days later, whatever is left will fly to Lisbon and try to reach a Champions League semi-final.

Nobody in a position of authority over this calendar will face any scrutiny for how we arrive at that point. The associations will move on to their next set of fixtures. The next international window will arrive on schedule. And the clubs, as always, will deal with the consequences. We will deal with ours.