Premier League Injury Table 19 - 20

[Rondolari 3]

First Team Squad Members x Number of PL matches unavailable owing to injury 
As of GW 25

Bournemouth	155
Man Utd	138
Newcastle	113
Watford	105
Norwich	104
Chelsea	104
Liverpool	100
Man City	88
Spurs	83
Palace	80
Everton	77
Villa	77
Arsenal	75
West Ham	73
Brighton	64
Wolves	53
Southampton	50
Burnley	45
Leicester	28
Sheffield Utd	14

[Crafty Canary 495]

Injuries is why clubs have squads and shouldn’t be used as an excuse for performance.

[Branston Pickle 3,632]

This sort of thing does have some interest value, though - for instance Sheff U have been pretty lucky, having few injuries means they have been able to pick their strongest XI for games a lot more often; building partnerships/familiarity can be a big help.

Clearly the whole point of a squad is that it insulates against losing players, but there are times when injuries will clearly weaken one side more than another; that’s just the way of things though and gives other players a chance to prove themselves. 

[Midlands Yellow 3,924]

Liverpool should be fighting relegation with their bad luck with injuries.

[Feedthewolf 4,844]

53 minutes ago, Crafty Canary said:

Injuries is why clubs have squads and shouldn’t be used as an excuse for performance.

Take four centre backs out of any club in the division and I think you would see a lower level of performance. The defensive injury crisis right at the start of the season was clearly an exceptional case, and can be used as an excuse by any fair-minded person.

Over the course of the season it is evening itself out, as our defensive record since Christmas averages at just over 1.4 goals conceded per game (10 conceded in the last 7) now we have most of our defenders available again.

[Aggy 750]

17 minutes ago, Feedthewolf said:

Over the course of the season it is evening itself out, as our defensive record since Christmas averages at just over 1.4 goals conceded per game (10 conceded in the last 7) now we have most of our defenders available again.

Hmm, we’ve only scored 5 in our last 7. Does having fit defenders stop us from scoring?

[Feedthewolf 4,844]

Just now, Aggy said:

Hmm, we’ve only scored 5 in our last 7. Does having fit defenders stop us from scoring?

That, my friend, is a separate issue altogether... 🙂

[nutty nigel 7,509]

It's funny because these issues remind me of the old adage "beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder". By that I mean it's twisted to suit a persons outlook. There were quite a few posts last season saying we were "lucky that important players stayed injury free".

If you can't be unlucky can you still be lucky?

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

17 hours ago, nutty nigel said:

It's funny because these issues remind me of the old adage "beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder". By that I mean it's twisted to suit a persons outlook. There were quite a few posts last season saying we were "lucky that important players stayed injury free".

If you can't be unlucky can you still be lucky?

Absolutely, I think last season we were overall reasonably fortunate injury-wise.  I remember Pukki being out for a spell but by and large I think we had fewer injuries than average and we generally had decent coverage available.

It's interesting to see Sheffield Utd with so few injuries, I already knew they'd been able to field an unchanged back 4 all season.  I wonder what difference it would have made if we'd had our first-choice back 4 playing every game ?

 

This season has been the worst I can remember in over 25 years following City, I can never before remember having to play a midfielder at CB for several games. 

[Beetley Yellow 57]

It’d be interesting to see that table at GW14 or so. I’d guess we’d be even higher. Our inability to have a stable team and/or be able have players in their preferred positions ‘killed’ us in early season. The very time we needed stability. It’s just annoying that having most back from injury recently, we’ve lost the ability to take chances.