Celtic prepare for their first European Qualifier as Wimbledon still progresses, and already there are injury doubts. Bayo joins Rogic on the side lines.
With a Treble Treble, and European Qualification become ever more elongated and arduous, are Celtic paying a price for success?
Are Celtic simply playing too many games and having insufficient recovery time to keep the squad fresh and fit? Or is it just down to the vagaries of luck?
Injury Record
Over the last five seasons, the number of injuries per season is as follows.
- Games Lost to Injury = the sum count of the number of matches all squad players lost to injury over the season.
- The Players Named in Squad includes all players that made at least the bench on at least one matchday.
- The % Change column shows the increase or decrease in Games Lost to Injury over the season.
Between Deila’s two seasons, there was a small increase in players lost to injury.
Then, in Rodger’s first Invincible season, the Games Lost to Injury actually decreased by 5%. This highlights once again how that season was a golden one where Expected Goals was exceeded, long shots went in and injuries were manageable.
What has happened since is a 46% increase in Games Lost to Injury in 17/18 and a further 58% increase on that during 18/19.
From losing 182 playing days to injury in 16/17 Celtic lost 418 playing days to injury last season.
That is surely down to more than (bad) luck?
Injuries Per Player
There are variable numbers of players used in each season.
Here is the graph showing, on average, how many matches each player lost to injury in the squad:
In 14/15, on average, every squad player lost 5.08 matches to injury over the season. By 18/19 this has more than doubled to 10.45. EVERY squad player, on average, missing over 10 games to injury.
Clearly the reality is a few players missing many games and some missing few.
But is there another squad in world football with this absence rate?
Injuries Per Match
Each season there are a different number of matches. I calculate the average number of players missing per match below.
On average, Deila had between 3 and 4 players unavailable every match.
The same was true for Rodgers until last season when 6.63 players were unavailable per match, on average.
Why Is This Happening?
I don’t have the Sports Science or Sport’s Medicine data and so can only speculate.
Factors of impact include:
- ever shortening Summer breaks;
- travel to far flung parts of “Europe”;
- difficult playing conditions regarding heat and humidity;
- a variety of quality of pitches both domestically and in Europe (artificial / poor quality);
- increasing number of games;
- increasing number of high intensity games (more qualifiers, more quarter, semi and finals);
- the additional strain of international travel, play, tournaments;
- the cumulative impact of all of the above.
Summary
The cumulative cost of three years playing at the highest level of intensity going for all competitions is taking its toll on the Celtic squad. Injury absence has increased over 100% in five seasons. Celtic miss over 6 players each and every match. Each squad member now averages missing over 10 games a season to injury.
Hopefully the medical team at Celtic are always pushing the knowledge forward in regards to recovery and conditioning.
Success comes at a very human cost for Celtic. It’s why they have a large squad.
Celtic should pull their players from international duty unless it is vitally important . Only my opinion ????????
I totally agree
I believe the medical team at Celtic are not up to the job required. It doesn’t seem right so many injuries, are they doing correct warm ups ect and are they getting taught recovery stretches and so on , seems to be a lack of experience in the medical team
Seasons 14/15, 15/16 & 16/17 show an average of 3.17 days of missing players per match. A fairly even distribution across the years under review.
Season 17/18 saw a rise of approximateley 39% in the number of days of missing players per match. Season 18/19 saw a rise of 56% in the number of missing players per match.
Without doubt a certain unquantifiable % would have been the cummulative effects of greater number of matches played per season, increased European involvement and travel plus the associated reduction in “Holidays” available to staff. (Interspersed are also International appearances and pre season matches).
The successive Trebles would have in the ordinary course of events heralded a season on season deterioration,(lack of rest & recreation). Rises of the magnitude experienced would suggest other criteria were comming into play.
The nearer Celtic came to achieving titles 7 & 8 I contend that various “Darker ” influences came to bear (sic). With the mighty Sevco having been denied Silverware in the Scottish Cup and with the enormity of the gulf between clubs being so obvious other mechanisms were needed to try to halt the Timmy Treble Triumphs.
Defenders and others at Scottlish Klubs having a Kultural affinity with the Phoenix like team from Ibrokes felt it , to a high Degree, to be their bounden duty to employ the Agricultural Defensive measures for which they are reknowned. The failure of the dignified MIBs to rein in this overly physical approach gave licence to the Proud Volunteers to elevate their brutality to new heghts.
Co-existing with this new tactical approach the Dignified Custodians of Scottish Football vied with each other to see who was the most dextrous, original in thought and contortionist in nature, found radical new ways to interpret the extant laws of the game. This resulted unsurprisingly in a myriad of offenders being exhonerated of culpaBillyty.
For season 2019/20, as the magical 9IAR is attempted and the fabled Eldorado of 10IAR is in sight the watchword must be ” You ain’t seen nuffin yet”.
Hail,Hail.
A great bit of work CBN. A frightening set of statistics which I am sure will be highlighted at Board level.
Be interesting to see if there is a compound effect, for example, how many of the playing days lost last season were incurred by players who had participated in the past two seasons?
Would also be interesting to see if there is a correlation to players being unavailable in their first season with us, I am wondering if the intensity of of our training regime takes its toll?
Hold that thought.
A follow up assessing that is on it’s way later today.
Just a brilliant site thank you for your hard work
Hail Hail
thank you – very kind
For me this is fairly straightforward and it comes down to squad rotation.
We had a massive squad under Rodgers a squad in which he had a large hand in building.
Yet he continually played the same key players over and over again giving them little or not time for rest and recuperation.
Tierney and McGregor were run into the ground even though he had backup for both.
He had Izaguirre and Hayes as backup for Tierney and could have rotated them if he chose.
He had Brown,Ntcham,Biton,Mulumbu and Kouassi not too mention Ajer who could have slotted in for McGregor.
Not only did he not rest McGregor but also had him filling in at Left Back too even though he had Izzy and Hayes fit and available.
Rodgers is a numpty in this regard.
To preoccupied with his vision to see what was going on around him.
Even Deila gave Forrest down time to resolve his long term injury issues regardless of what impact that had on the team.
We also have had previous when it comes to signing injury prone players at Celtic which pointed to an issue on the Medical front at the a Club.
McCourt Boerrigter Jozo Compper are examples of this but the Turnbull debacle might be pointing to there being a stricter policy now being deployed as regards Medicals.
My background is in Earthmoving and Construction and I have previously questioned whether there was an issue at Lennoxtown when they laid the pitches as over compaction of the soil could have an adverse effect on the joints and muscles.
Anyone who has played on Grass pitches all Summer and then played on either Red Blaze or a frosted pitch can probably appreciate the difference in recovery after the first few games going into the winter months as it generally takes a toll on the calf and lower legs.
I think it would be worthwhile the Club doing some testing to see if there is anything in it.
If only just to rule it out.
How would you explain the same pattern at Liverpool?
Over reliance on the same players and a lack of rotation within the squad.
We have had issues with injuries going back to Lennons tenure previously though.