Arsenal have sacked head of sports medicine and performance Dr Zafar Iqbal with immediate effect, six days after the Champions League final defeat in Budapest. The decision, reported exclusively by Sam Wallace in The Telegraph on Monday, has been described by people close to the medical department as a major surprise to Iqbal himself and to colleagues at the training ground.

Iqbal was informed of the termination at a meeting with chief executive Richard Garlick on June 1. The 51-year-old had served as head of sports medicine and performance since February 2024, replacing Gary O'Driscoll, who departed for Manchester United after fifteen years at the club. He arrived with an outstanding reputation. He had held senior medical roles at Crystal Palace, Liverpool, Tottenham and Leyton Orient, served as chair of the Football Association Medical Society, and worked with the Pakistan national cricket team. Despite his impressive CV, the club seems to have decided to overhaul its medical department.

The Telegraph also reported last month that Mikel Arteta had separately commissioned Joaquin Acedo, a freelance physiotherapist and close associate of the manager, to conduct an independent review of our injury situation. Whether the review led directly to Iqbal's removal is unclear. What we know is that two exercises looking at the same problem were under way in the same fortnight, and one of them has now produced a personnel decision.

There is plenty for any review to examine. This was a season in which Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka, Jurrien Timber, Kai Havertz and Mikel Merino all missed lengthy spells, with Ben White ruled out from May with knee ligament damage and Riccardo Calafiori absent for much of the spring. Several of those absences involved surgery. The squad played 63 competitive matches across four competitions in addition to five pre-season fixtures, and the medical and performance teams were carrying a workload as heavy as any in European football. That workload is the context Iqbal was working within. It is also what the club appears to have concluded the medical setup is no longer structured to handle.

The Iqbal departure has landed on the same evening that Jurrien Timber withdrew from the Netherlands squad for the World Cup with the groin injury that never properly settled. The two stories are not officially linked, and the club has not made any public statement connecting them. But the medical questions of this season, including Timber's Champions League final selection, are the questions a review of this scale would be expected to ask. Iqbal has paid the price either for answers the club did not like or for a structural change the club had already decided to make. We do not yet know which.

The rebuild this summer is going to extend well beyond the playing staff. Whether Acedo takes the role permanently, or whether the club appoints from outside, is the next question. The medical setup that will lead us into 2026-27 will not be the one that took us to Budapest.