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Untold Injury Half-Term Report
By Dale Higginbottom
What is the point of it all? Why are we here?
Well back in August I posed the question, Do Arsenal really get more injuries than anyone else? and out of that asked, “Do we have good reason to blame injuries for poor results?”
Injuries are a factor that each club and manager has to deal with but does one team really get it worse than another?
Each season seems to be more physical than the last, not in terms of tackles but the stresses on the body. Players must run more, cover more, support more, close-down faster, run harder, run faster and as a result squads have grown to match the increase in injuries that have subsequently occurred. Are high injuries levels an Arsenal only phenomenon though?
Rewind back to Wigan Vs Arsenal, April 2010. We had something like eight first team players (Gallas, Vermaelen, Fabregas, Song, Arshavin, Denilson, van Persie, Almunia) plus a few more squad players (Eduardo, Ramsey, Djourou, Gibbs) unavailable to play or play any significant role in the game. We lost the game and the result completely ended our slim title hopes.
This was I think the third season in succession where our league campaign was hit hard by the sheer volume of injuries and it led me to write and article wondering whether the Invincibles would have coped so well with similar injury levels (found here: http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/archives/4610).
Was this run of injury hit campaigns purely down to our bad luck or is there something else that hasn’t been thought about before? Do other teams have the same problems as us? We all remember our injury list in more detail than our rivals’ but does that make things seem worse than they are or do the actual numbers stack up?
When injuries hit our squad badly the Anti-Arsenal Arsenal supporters come out with the same old guff of, ‘Wenger buys crocked players’ or ‘Wenger has not bought enough cover, the squad is too thin’. Now these statements may have had an element of truth but who was measuring this? Who could say categorically that firstly Arsenal are getting more injuries than the average?
Secondly, could anyone prove that these increased injuries were as a result of Wenger’s buying policy. Thirdly, could it be said that the squad was actually “too thin” and any shortages in cover for positions could not simply be due to abnormal levels of injuries and not obvious oversights by the manager.
This season we are looking deeply into the injuries of the big teams (and Liverpool) in order to resolve such issues.
Starting from game one, recording all the injuries for each of the big teams in order to get a balanced view of which teams are hit hardest by injuries.
After a bit of refining and alteration and the with the aid of a clumsy spreadsheet I’ve come to the format that we see each week, a list of players missing entirely from the league game squad due solely to injury. This list has developed over the weeks and now that every team has played 19 games it’s time for a half-term report.
Let’s start with the simple, easy numbers, Total injuries. These are the combined number of games missed for each squad.
Total Injuries
- Arsenal 113
- Tottenham 111
- Man Utd 90
- Man City 80
- Chelsea 71
- Liverpool 52
Oh, to be in Liverpool’s position (well not in the league). Liverpool have played the same number of games as us (28 each this season, excluding games after the 19th league game) but they have been able to rest players much more, being knocked out of the Carling Cup and fielding weakened teams in the European competition.
There will be an element of rushing players back and taking risks due to their thin squad but even so, you would then expect repeat injuries along the way.
As we have seen throughout this season, Arsenal and Tottenham lead the way with injuries. This might even out over the season but even if it doesn’t we’re holding out pretty well, particularly when you consider the Chelsea position of fifth in the league and the second best injury figures.
So, we’re top in total numbers but what about the number of players that have picked up an injury this season.
Number of players having missed at least one league game through injury.
- Tottenham 19
- Man Utd 17
- Arsenal 16
- Chelsea 16
- Man City 15
- Liverpool 12
It has been pretty obvious that Spurs have had a tough time of it when it comes to losing players to injury this season. They have always been near the top and in addition to these figures they have been without Jonathon Woodgate who is not included as he failed to make the 25-man squad.
Chelsea is the interesting one here. Despite having much fewer total injuries they have had the same number of players out as us. This tells us that we’ve had many more long-term injuries (Vermaelen, Ramsey, Almunia, Frimpong etc) whereas Chelsea have had a spread of short injuries over a number of players.
This is shown a little more by the average injury length (Total injuries / number of players)
- Arsenal 7.06
- Tottenham 5.84
- Man City 5.33
- Man Utd 5.29
- Chelsea 4.44
- Liverpool 4.33
That’s quite an interesting statistic. Arsenal are far an away the team with the worst recovery times. An average of just over seven games per player is much higher than any other club, Liverpool have an average of just 4.33 games!!
Why is this the case? Is there something wrong with our medical staff? Well, probably not, I doubt that the man who brought scientific methodology and increased focus on the physical fitness of players to the Premier League would allow his medical facilities and personnel to be below par.
What is it then? Well, firstly it could be coincidence. We have had a few long-term injuries and these might not be so influential on the figures when taken over a whole season. Secondly, we have a squad that the manager has faith in. Wenger is more than happy fielding a whole second eleven if the situation requires it and this has a great knock on effect on fatigue levels which may be a benefit seen only in the injuries in latter half of the season. But also, this trust in the squad means that when players are injured they are given plenty of time to return to full fitness before being pushed into the squad.
It’s no surprise that the two teams with question marks over squad size and depth have players out for the shortest amount of time, for they can’t afford not to have the players playing, whether they are 100% fit or not. One other thought is that Liverpool and Chelsea have quite thin squads and so are not rotating as much as us. This might lead to more short-term injuries and at present they have been riding their luck a bit with long-term injuries.
In terms of a comparison there’s a lot more to look into so I’ll try to delve a bit deeper into the figures in future weeks. The overall figures only provide a basic overview of what we can understand from the injury articles but on the whole, we can be quite proud of our progress this season and how well the squad copes with the injury situation.
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