Untold Injury Review of the Season: The First Team, and how it is impossible to stay fit all season. « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
Untold Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal
Untold Injury Review of the Season – Part 4, The First Team
By Dale Higginbottom
Here we are again, more injury stats and this time more specifically, injuries to the first team, the typical starting eleven.
In part three I put together the lists of the most used players by each team to create their most common starting eleven. Using these I’m now going to show just how often these “first-choice” players have been unavailable for selection through injury.
Firstly we’ll look at the players in the first eleven who have been available all season, that is, players who have effectively been fit for every league game during the 2010/2011 campaign. Some of these players may not have been selected, been at the birth of a child, or been suspended for a few games during the season but the table below shows the players who have not missed a single Premier League game as a result of a reported injury.
| Team | # of injury-free players | Who? |
| Man Utd | 0 | – |
| Tottenham | 0 | – |
| Arsenal | 1 | Wilshere |
| Man City | 2 | Hart, Milner |
| Chelsea | 3 | Cech, Malouda, Cole |
| Liverpool | 4 | Reina, Skrtel, Lucas, Maxi/Suarez* |
*(Maxi was not injured up until the point he was replaced in the starting eleven by Suarez)
Now, whilst this information doesn’t in any way show the extent to which the first team players were injured during the season, it does show just how many players have had injury-free league campaigns. In total 10 out of 66 players have been injury-free this season and we can’t even come close to making a team out of those as 3 of the 10 were goalkeepers. Put another way, a first choice Premier League player for a top six club has a 15% (15.15%) chance of having an injury-free league campaign. This drops to 12% (11.66%) when looking at outfield players only.
I know that other players have gone the season without a reported injury (e.g. Arshavin, Chamakh) but it’s the players that would usually play week in, week out that are putting more stress on their bodies and are probably more at risk of injury.
Personally, even though I’ve been collecting this data all season, I hadn’t really realised just how difficult it is for players to stay fit for an entire season. We’ve all noted how van Persie seems to struggle to get through a season uninjured but maybe that’s just the norm for a top Premier League player in 2011. If only 15% of players can be fit and available for an entire season then it must be quite unlikely that fans will ever see the first-choice eleven all fit at once for any game, let alone see them all fit for a big game against Man Utd or Chelsea when you arguably need them the most. (More on that in a bit)
That statistic really shows just how much the value of a good squad is in the Premier League in 2011. This is something that I think has slowly become an increasing issue as the game has become more physical, maybe not in terms of harsh tackles but in the need for players to run further, faster and more frequently. If we look back maybe 40, 30, 20, 10 even 5 years the necessity for deep squads was really not there (I’ve previously made comment about the Invincibles’ squad being on the thin side) so this new squad-depth requirement has proven to be something of an unwanted addition over recent years that maybe we didn’t foresee when the plans and financing of the Emirates were being drawn up.
On a similar vein (and going back to the point I made earlier), let’s look at the teams as a whole. Obviously we know that the first choice eleven of every team has suffered injuries but how many games has each club been able to select from all of their first eleven?
| Team | # Games with full 1st XI available | Which Games? (by Gameweek) |
| Arsenal | 0 | – |
| Tottenham | 1 | 1 |
| Man Utd | 1 | 38 |
| Liverpool | 4 | 1, 2, 3, 6 |
| Chelsea | 6 | 1, 2, 32, 35, 36, 37 |
| Man City | 13 | 1, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 29, 37 |
The very interesting point here is that Arsenal has never been able to field their full strength eleven in a league game. In fact, there has been no game all season when Vermaelen, Fabregas and Nasri have all played together. This is obviously in stark contrast to Man City who finished only three points ahead of us, yet were able to field a first choice team on 13 occasions.
I need to just clarify that this is obviously excluding times when players were suspended or left out of the squad for other reasons such as form. This is purely a look to see if the manager’s typical “first choice” eleven were all available for selection and if any players were absent it was due to non-injury reasons.
Personally I would be surprised if City come anywhere close to repeating this feat next season. As we’ve seen with Tottenham’s injury woes this season, playing in the Champions League can have a massive impact on squad fitness and the additional games that require the club’s best players to play (unlike Europa League football) will certainly mean fewer league games where the best players have to be withdrawn through injury.
I think Chelsea might’ve been a little lucky to have six games with their full team available but I think the norm for a top-six Premier League team will be in the region of 1-5 games in the season, which isn’t that many come to think of it.
Finally, let’s look at the totals. The total number of injuries to the first eleven players (the five “star” players plus the 6 others).
| Actuals | |||
| Stars | 1st Team | Total 1st Team | |
| Tottenham | 73 | 45 | 118 |
| Arsenal | 64 | 33 | 97 |
| Man Utd | 17 | 58 | 75 |
| Liverpool | 37 | 29 | 66 |
| Chelsea | 21 | 30 | 51 |
| Man City | 10 | 28 | 38 |
So, here are just the raw actual totals for each team and one interesting thing here is that the top three remain the same as when comparing the whole squads (from the last article) but the bottom three have switch around a bit. Man City, who were fourth in total squad injuries with 145 are now a distant last.
The difference between the top and the bottom is huge, which is quite something considering that these two teams were fighting it out for the final Champions League spot for so long. Man City had first team injury levels that were 32% that of Tottenham and 39% that of Arsenal. I say this again, with Champions League football to contend with, City will not be in the same position next season.
United were quite lucky on the injuries to their star players, significantly fewer that the two teams above them but I wonder how thinks may have been a little tighter if say Vidic and Van der Sar had the sorts of injuries that Vermaelen and Fabianski had to contend with last season.
Now putting in the values from the last article, where the star players’ injuries are valued 25% higher, we get the following table.
| Values | |||
| Stars | 1st Team | Total 1st Team Value | |
| Tottenham | 91.25 | 45 | 136.25 |
| Arsenal | 80 | 33 | 113 |
| Man Utd | 21.25 | 58 | 79.25 |
| Liverpool | 46.25 | 29 | 75.25 |
| Chelsea | 26.25 | 30 | 56.25 |
| Man City | 12.5 | 28 | 40.5 |
Tottenham still top but now the difference between top and bottom is greater due to City having very few injuries to their star players. The gap has also stretched between North London and the rest, due to the far superior injury levels in the “star” category.
Liverpool are also now a lot closer to United and that further shows the value of having a deep squad (1st Vs 6th in the league).
I think the main thing that comes out of this is that teams competing in the Champions League are at greater risk of getting injuries to their key players, their “first-choice” eleven. Carling Cup, FA Cup and Europa League games usually are games in which the big clubs can rest their players so maybe this coming season will be one in which we see Liverpool and Tottenham with slightly fewer injuries than last season and City with a few more. I would also be surprised if Chelsea don’t suffer a few more; last season must have been a fluke.
About goats, the rain gods, and a new Ivorian striker: Going to the 1.FC Köln
We have a definite link between buying a club and match fixing: why journalists in the UK are not as exercised by the issue as those in other countries
Arsenal History
The Wenger Years reaches the cup win in 2003 and the statements that the top players were leaving