‘Injuries are inevitable’
That tight timeframe, of course, will not help matters.
We are used to hearing managers such as Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola discuss fixture congestion and scheduling, and the next seven weeks will be provide a huge test of players’ endurance and conditioning.
The Premier League’s provisional aim is to finish the current season by the end of July, a period of just 41 days in which all teams will have to play at least nine league matches – and four sides will play 10. Those clubs still in the FA Cup could play up to 13 matches by the first weekend in August, and that is before some potentially go onto finish their European campaigns.
The BBC this week quoted research conducted by Zone7, an artificial intelligence platform which specialises in injury-risk forecasting. The research suggested that a compressed schedule – eight games in 30 days was the figure used – meant an increase of 25% in terms of incidence of injury.
The Premier League, following the lead of the Bundesliga, will permit five substitutions per side for the remaining fixtures, but that alone will not offset the risk.
“There’s always a spike in injuries during congested fixture periods,” says Andy Renshaw. “At Christmas, for example, we know that the injury incidence always goes up. So shortening the period we’ve got to prepare players for a Premier League game, that causes a lot of problems.
“I think we’ll end up seeing a ton of hamstring injuries. The muscle injuries are a much greater risk. We don’t know by how much, because we’ve not had anything like this before, but we know that the risk is greater because players are not as conditioned. They can’t be.
“And look, everybody in the game knows this fact; match injuries are way more prevalent than training-ground injuries. Way, way more prevalent. And the players are going to resume this season without having had a competitive fixture to prepare them.
“Players’ bodies are used to tolerating a certain amount of load during a week. A certain amount of distance, accelerations, decelerations, high-speed runs and changes of direction.
“You don’t have to work at Liverpool to know that Jurgen demands a lot from his team, and that demand is carefully managed by staff so that they don’t spike that workload.
“Now, they have to spike. They only have three weeks to get ready for the season. You can’t just steadily increase it like you would in a normal pre-season, because there isn’t enough time.”
Liam Hayes adds: “It is inevitable that muscle and soft-tissue injuries will happen because match fitness has not been replicated in lockdown. We have already seen it in the Bundesliga.
“I think medical teams will be on high alert to withdraw players on the slightest of tweaks or pulls in matches and that’s where the five substitutions come into play to allow them to do that. Players recover faster when taken off early.
“We will see novel or innovative ideas from clubs in recovery from matches as smaller teams usually have a week between matches, so we will see a lot of active recovery rather than high-intensity training sessions before games.
“Sadly, it is inevitable that there will be injuries, but these guys are in the best hands.”
Source: Goal.com