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Mikel Arteta says Arsenal are caught in a "really dangerous circle" with injuries - but denied they are a result of overtraining.
Arsenal have suffered injuries to a number of key players throughout the season and will be without midfielder Declan Rice, defender William Saliba and forward Leandro Trossard for the match against Club Brugge in the league phase of the Champions League on Wednesday.
Trossard, who scored in the loss to Aston Villa at the weekend, only just returned from injury but was brought off before the end of the game despite only being introduced as a second-half substitute.
Arsenal are still without forward Kai Havertz and defenders Gabriel Magalhaes and Cristhian Mosquera, while striker Viktor Gyokeres is just returning from injury.
The Gunners have also made a change to their Champions League squad because of injury, with Gabriel Jesus, who has been out since January after cruciate ligament surgery, replacing 15-year-old Max Dowman - who picked up his injury playing for Arsenal Under-21s in a friendly against Manchester United on Saturday.
But when asked if overtraining was the cause of the problems, Arteta rejected the idea.
"No, because we don't train." Arteta said referring to the short turnaround between games at this point in the season before saying his side trained for "20 minutes" on Tuesday.
"We don't have time to train. So training is not there but obviously the fact that you are missing players, you are loading other players more [as] a consequence. It's a really dangerous circle that one."
Arsenal also had to deal with long-term injuries to Havertz and Bukayo Saka last season, while centre-back Gabriel missed an important couple of months at the end of the last campaign.
And Arteta said that alongside the Arsenal medical team he was always looking at the reasons for the injuries they suffer.
"Some of the players have played over 150 games in two seasons so it starts to get overloaded. You start to ask them again and again and again to do that [and] at some point they will break down," he said.
"It's something that we are constantly looking at. We have played a lot of games with a lot of players missing that puts a lot of stress and then more injuries but we are on it.
"I'm really happy what we're doing in terms of the medical stuff and everything that we are trying to bring together, but sometimes as well we need some things to go on our side."
The football calendar has been been a much-debated topic in recent months.
Arsenal and Crystal Palace have had matches moved by the Premier League later this month to ease fixture congestion.
Arsenal's trip to Everton and Palace's game at Leeds - both originally scheduled for 14:00 GMT on Sunday, 21 December - will now be played at 20:00 a day earlier.
The games were shifted as the two sides play each other in the EFL Cup quarter-final on 23 December.
Arsenal have already played 22 games across all competitions as they compete in the Premier League, the Champions League and the Carabao Cup. They start their FA Cup campaign in January against Portsmouth.
Last year the top European leagues, including the Premier League, and global players' union Fifpro filed a legal complaint against world governing body Fifa over what they called its "abuse of dominance" in the game.
The European Leagues, which represents 39 leagues and 1,130 clubs in 33 countries, said at the time that it was filing the complaint to the European Commission to protect the welfare of players.
Last month Fifa announced a series of measures it said would address player welfare, including having at least 72 hours of rest between matches, and a rest period of at least 21 days at the end of each season.
However Fifpro - which was not involved in talks prior to the announcement - accused Fifa of undermining plans to tackle player welfare issues by consulting with "Fifa-friendly organisations for consultation processes rather than engaging with the recognised football representative bodies".
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