- Nottingham Forest v Arsenal: a question of balance
- Arsenal; the road to the Champions League final and days missed by injury
By Tony Attwood
According to the Premier League injury table Arsenal now lie in seventh position in the table of players missing (which includes those missing through injury and those through being banned), equal with Brighton and Southampton. Arsenal have seven men out, Nottingham Forest on the other hand have one.
Here are the number of players out for the top nine clubs with absentees.
- Chelsea: 9
- Everton: 9
- Wolverhampton Wanderers: 8
- Brentford: 8
- Ipswich Town: 8
- Manchester United: 8
- Arsenal: 7
- Brighton and Hove Albion: 7
- Southampton: 7
Liverpool on the other hand have two injuries at the moment. Nottingham Forest have one.
Now this table can be viewed as a result of anything from bad management, through to pure chance, but there certainly does seem to be a link between the number of injuries a club has and where it ends up in the league. It is not the only link of course but it is a link.
That link is obviously the fact that the more injuries a club has, the lowest down the league it sinks. In fact it is possible to argue that injuries can play as much a part in where teams end up in the table at the end of the season as the ability of the players.
Now of course newspapers and blogs publish all sorts of analyses of injuries, which often seem to be at variance with each other, but as an ex-academic, I still have the tendency to prefer proper research done to academic standards rather than numbers pumped out by newspapers and blogs without any indication of the source of information or the validity thereof.
In this regard, one of the best pieces of original academically validated research was published in 2020 in the article “Estimation of injury costs: financial damage of English Premier League teams’ underachievement due to injuries” (full reference at the end of this piece). This looked at the impact of injuries on team achievements for 2016/17.
The number of player days lost through injury in that season ranged from 203 for West Bromwich Albion up to 2289 for Hull City. Put another way Hull lost over 11 times the number of player days as WBA through injury that season.
The number of separate injuries was also highly varied from 35 for Burnley to 85 for Sunderland. The research also did an estimate for the number of league points lost or gained due to injury. This ranged from Tottenham who gained 17 points through the teams they played having injuries to Manchester United who lost 24 points through themselves having injuries for particular games.
You can of course read the whole paper here although it is a significant academic text, so not the normal sort of reading that we would refer to here. But there are some points that come out of this which are certainly worth considering.
For a start, player history can indicate whether a player is more or less likely to get an injury. Injuries are rarely completely overcome and can leave players vulnerable to certain situations – and there is no doubt some opposition players will seek to exploit this.
What’s more injuries are to some degree random, and as a result, clubs can not only find themselves with several players injured, they can find themselves with several players who cover the same position injured at once. Thus occasionally players are forced to play out of position or are rushed back from injury, and each of these actions can cause more injuries.
Likewise, not every player is of equal merit. Arsenal have this season, for example, suffered in two ways. One is through having a player such as Saka injured, for his importance to the team cannot be over-estimated. It is not that he is a brilliant player, it is that him being on the pitch means the opposition has to adjust its tactics to find a way to deal with Saka, which means that less attention might be given elsewhere. The loss of Saka can thus be a double negative. The other of course is having a number of forward line players all injured at once, rather than having the injuries spread throughout the team.
Meanwhile we have the fact (ignored by all the media) that regular Premier Leagues referees take action against fouls by players in different ways. Considering only those referees who have seen over 10 PL games this season, we can see that while John Brooks has handed out 5.42 yellow cards a game, Anthony Taylor has handed out 3.13 cards per game this season. That might not look like a great difference but it is in fact a difference of over 73%. Thus players and indeed managers who get Taylor as a referee might well be inclined to tell their defenders to go hard into tackles, because there is less chance of getting a card. This can lead to more injuries.
So we can conclude that injuries can be caused by chance and by the depth of the squad (as players played out of position can be more likely to cause and/or receive significant injuries). What’s more some referees protect players more than others through the greater use of yellow cards – a defender who knows he is in a gam overseen by a “card-happy” referee, is likely to commit fewer dangerous tackles.
Further, a player who is required to play out of position may well be more susceptible to injury because of his lack of experience in that position, and his lack of experience in playing against certain players.
Finally, a club facing a number of player injuries may well be tempted to bring back a player from injury sooner than prudence would suggest, simply because there is no one else in the squad to cover that position, or because results are against the team.
All of which raise the question, why don’t clubs have more cover in the squad? I’ll try and look at this in a later piece.
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The prime source of data for this article is Eliakim E, Morgulev E, Lidor R, et al. “Estimation of injury costs: financial damage of English Premier League teams’ underachievement due to injuries. BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine 2020;6:e000675. doi:10.1136/bmjsem-2019-000675
I have no doubt that Arsenal players have been regularly targetted by fouling opponents. I don’t accept the common pundit view that “no player sets out with the intention to injure an opponent” Diaby, Eduardo and Ramsey have good reason to disagree. In it’s general demial that this happesns, the media are likely to default in favoir of the aggressor. – “he’s not that type of player”, “he was distraught” in the case of Shawcross. This progresses towards blaming the victim, as in Ramsey’s case and in the associated attack on Mr. Wenger for not accepting the apologies and being prepared to forgive and move on.
Further to last post:
Reyes and Wilshere were persistently targetted by inferior, less gifted player (eg Nevilles and McNair). Reyes was dismissed as being too soft and unable to compete in the English league and Wilshere was blamed for having weak ankles, being injury-prone and “holding on to the ball too long”
We have seen Odegaard being targetted by Rodri in a Norway v Spain match.
It can be guaranteed that the first time Saka gets involved in a game, he will be scythed down by an opponent. Referees do not prevent this and whilst they may eventually issue a yellow card later in the game, it is just as likely to be directed at Saka himself for any first attempt at a retaliatory foul.
Injuries are, of course, part of football as a high-speed contact sport. However, the official and media demial that some injuries are deliberately inflicted is yet another example of the corruption within the sport.