Now, I know you might be thinking I’m crazy for writing an article claiming Liverpool’s injury woes are a thing of the past, considering we’ve lost Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain to a long term injury, Adam Lallana seems to have the Daniel Sturridge bug, Ere Can has been out for a while with a back injury, Joel Matip is out, and Sadio Mane was spotted limping out of a hospital, but please hear me out!
Twitter: Injury update on Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain: https://t.co/Gn5yRbf17Q https://t.co/7s7vPGrRyr (@LFC)
Cast your mind back to the 2015/16 season. Brendan Rodgers had just been sacked and Jurgen Klopp has replaced him. At this stage, a lot was made of the ‘heavy metal’ style of football Klopp would look to implement, which had worked wonders at Borussia Dortmund.
The tone surrounding the appointment was mainly excitement at what the next few years could bring for Liverpool under the German. Of course, there had to be a catch. There was. Pretty quickly journalists and the general public began questioning whether such a style of play could be sustainable in England in terms of injuries, given the intense football played, as well as the crowded fixture list, especially around the festive period. The majority focussed on the amount of muscle injuries they believed it would yield, so that’s what I’ll do too.
Even Big Sam, in his infinite knowledge, decided to weigh in with his expert opinion. Would be interesting to hear his thoughts now…
However, fast forward two months to around the end of the year, and the early pessimists seemed vindicated in their predictions.
By January 2016, eleven different players had picked up muscle injuries since Klopp had taken his seat in the Anfield dug out. There were now stats to back up what some had been saying in the early days of Klopp’s tenure.
Despite the injuriesm you’ll still remember a thrilling run in the Europa league, including that game against Klopp’s former club. It’s after this that things really started to turn around on the injury front. In a stark contrast to the previous season, the entire 2016/17 season only yielded a total of ten muscular during the entire season, a far cry from the eleven in two months as I mentioned earlier.
It seemed that the players benefited from having a full pre-season with Klopp and his new Bayern inspired fitness team, and also from become more efficient in their pressing and running around like headless chickens much less as Klopp had embedded his vision onto the players more. Liverpool players went from collectively spending 17.5 months on the sideline of the 2015/16 season since Klopp’s arrival in mid October to 14 months for the entire 2016/17 season. Total playing time lost across the squad also dropped significantly from 62 months in 2015/16 to 38 months in 2016/17.
Finally, we can talk in the now. Before I give you the statistics, try to think of muscle injuries you can remember players picking up this season. I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong but I struggle to remember too many, and find it especially difficult when discounting the terrible luck Adam Lallana has had this season.
Now for the numbers on it. At this stage, I’ll present you a list of appearances of a few key players and how many of the fifty-games (including pre-season friendlies) these players have featured in this season.
Roberto Firmino: 57 appearances
Mo Salah: 53 appearances
Gini Wijnaldum: 52 appearances
James Milner: 49 appearances
This is just a few selected players, but if you take a look at my source for the above, you’ll see that the amount of games that key players have played this season almost certainly shows a marked improvement in the injury department from the early days.
put this primarily down to a few things: an excellent fitness and performance management team; a desire from the players to play for their manager and team (something Klopp hinted that Sturridge lacked); and an excellent recruitment process which shows seriously detailed analysis by scouting teams has been done before a player is signed (just look at Salah and Wijnaldum’s appearances).
To reverse the old saying, it’s more good judgement than luck if you ask me.
