Untold Injury Index – Gameweek 17; a review of the crocked

Here’s another one of these videos that I get 2.1p every time you click on it.  You must be over 45 to watch it, or else your heart will stop beating with the excitement.  It has nothing to do with the article below.

Untold Injury Index – Gameweek 17

By Dale Higginbottom

It’s been quite a busy weekend for all teams involved in our regular injury round-up. Whether it be on or off the pitch, there has definitely been a lot of media coverage surrounding each club but has any of the coverage been on injuries? Here are this week’s non-runners.

Man Utd Vs Arsenal

Man Utd (5 injuries)

• Goalkeeper – No injuries reported
• Defence – Evans (3)
• Midfield – Valencia (12), Hargreaves (15), Scholes (2)
• Attack – Owen (8)

Additional issues: Brown and Ferdinand were both doubts before the game, the former was an unused substitute whilst the latter made a full impact on the entire game (as well as Sagna’s midriff)

Arsenal (5 injuries)

• Goalkeeper – Almunia (11)
• Defence – Vermaelen (14), Gibbs (6)
• Midfield – Frimpong (16), Diaby (10)
• Attack – No injuries reported

Additional issues: Clichy recovered from injury to start and play the whole game. Fabianski and Djourou were only on the bench after picking up an injury. Fabregas was only fit enough to start on the bench, he come on after 64 minutes.

Tottenham Vs Chelsea

Tottenham (8 injuries)

• Goalkeeper, attack – No injuries reported
• Defence – King (11), Kaboul (5), Gallas (4)
• Midfield – O’Hara (17), Huddlestone (6), Jenas (3), Van der Vaart (3),  Kranjcar (2)

Additional issues: Woodgate, not in the 25-man squad, is not included in this list despite being injured.

Chelsea (4 injuries)

• Goalkeeper, attack – No injuries reported
• Defence – Alex (6), Bosingwa (8)
• Midfield – Benayoun (12), Zhirkov (4)

Additional issues: Lampard returned from his long-term in jury but was only fit enough to be a 77^th minute substitute.

West Ham Vs Man City

Man City (3 injuries)

• Goalkeeper – No injuries reported
• Defence – Bridge (8)
• Midfield – M. Johnson (17)
• Attack – Tchuimeni-Nimely (14)

Additional issues: Kolo Toure was reported as doubtful after his injury last week but played the whole game.

Newcastle Vs Liverpool

Liverpool (4 injuries)

• Goalkeeper, attack – No issues reported
• Defence – Agger (11), Carragher (2)
• Midfield – Gerrard (4), Spearing (4)

Additional issues: No additional issues reported.

Plenty of big games this weekend and the Tiny Totts’ injury worries don’t seem to be easing off any. They again top the injury table with us and United joint-second. City have again avoided major injury concerns and lie bottom of the injury table.

With five injuries each for us and United we can’t really put any performance down  to injuries. Our biggest loss at the moment continues to be Vermaelen but our defence and reserve keeper performed really well without him. It was a big game and to lose it was disappointing but a league is not won just on results against the top teams, we have proven this in previous seasons.

The second biggest game of the weekend was the London derby and again, despite their sparse injury list, Chelsea cannot win a game and so have now slipped to fourth to battle it out with the Tiny Totts for the last Champions League spot. The Tinies on the other hand (and it pains me to say this) are actually performing rather well when you look at the number of crocked players they have. Excluding Arsenal, I don’t think any other team would have coped with these injury levels and done so well.

Man City had quite a low-key game, away at West Ham and collected all threes points which is to be expected considering the very few injuries they have. They for once coped well without Tevez and after he put in a transfer request, they may have to do  that more regularly than they’d hoped.

Liverpool had a difficult visit to the North-East circus and came away with a defeat. Their injuries are far too few to be losing this badly to a team that has had it’s off-field troubles this week.

As fans we can’t always get the results we’d hoped for and sometimes we’re left wondering if our team is good enough. What I personally can see from this Arsenal team is without doubt a future and a great group of promising young players that will challenge for many seasons to come. But, I also see a team that is already there, ok not dominating, but definitely competing at the top level. I’d much rather be on this upward curve with the hope for the future than be in Chelsea’s position with all their ageing players or United’s where they can be held to ransom by one player because the rest of the squad are not up to much.

Bonus bit part II

Last week I looked at injuries to the defences and how this has impacted the number of goals conceded by each of the big teams (and Liverpool). This week I thought I’d flip the study round to look at the forward line. Our attack has often been described to not clinical enough and I wondered if the injuries has any impact on the number of goals scored.

So let’s start with goals scored (remember, Man Utd have only played 16 games so far)

• Man Utd 36
• Arsenal 34
• Chelsea 31
• Tottenham 25
• Man City 24
• Liverpool 21

Translated as goals per game

• Man Utd 2.25
• Arsenal 2
• Chelsea 1.82
• Tottenham 1.47
• Man City 1.41
• Liverpool 1.24

As before, we’ll look at the injuries, this time to attack and midfield.

• Arsenal 70
• Man Utd 66
• Tottenham 65
• Man City 48
• Chelsea 40
• Liverpool 21

Again per game to balance out United’s game in hand.

• Man Utd 4.13
• Arsenal 4.11
• Tottenham 3.82
• Man City 2.82
• Chelsea 2.35
• Liverpool 1.23

So, despite the high numbers of attack and midfield injuries, United and Arsenal can still score the highest number of goals per game. Liverpool, not surprisingly considering their league position, score the fewest goals and have very few excuses with only 21 attack and midfield injuries so far. It really is evidence of their weak squad, as we have been saying for a while now.

Chelsea’s numbers are interesting if you consider them as good title contenders. They have a worse scoring record than us (who’d have thought that 4 games into this season) yet they have close to half the injuries in attack and midfield than we have had. Untold have been saying for a while now that the Chelsea squad is under strength and the fact that a relatively few number of injuries can have a noticeable impact on goals scored is further evidence of this.

In the coming injury articles I’ll try to delve deeper into the details and see if anything interesting comes from these injuries but for now it looks like we’re scoring plenty and our squad depth is good enough to get through any injuries that have been thrown at it so far.