On the latest Huddle Breakdown podcast we were asked about the pros and cons should Brendan Rodgers be appointed next Celtic manager.
@jucojames discussed the injury profile and attitudes to risk prevalent at Celtic with reference to Kieran Tierney and playing through pain.
It reminded me that since July 2019 I had be highlighting the injury trends that seem to follow Rodgers around.
This piece highlights how at Liverpool the cumulative impact of player injury increased over his tenure.
Here I highlighted the impact as it unfurled at Celtic.
My parting comment was “I’ll continue to track”. So here we are.
Games Lost to Injury
Here’s the update on the average number of games lost to injury across the whole squad. The “squad” contains any player named in a match day.
The spike by the end of Rodgers’s reign remains the outlier amongst the managers since I started tracking my data.
Interestingly it also spiked a little during Postecoglou’s period.
Clearly every season sees a different number of games player and players used.
Players Missing Per Match
So, here are the average number of players missing per match day:
By this view broadly the same pattern emerges. It peaked with 18/19 Rodgers and an average 6.63 players missing per match.
What about at Leicester City? Is a reasonable next question.
Unfortunately I have not been able to easily scrape data from either Premier Injuries or transfermarkt . It would take a huge manual effort.
However, this piece from the Football Insider hints that Leicester were suffering league leading numbers of hamstring injuries during the 2021/22 season.
What we must bear in mind are factors such as:
- Bad luck;
- Propensity to have injury prone players in the squad;
- Training intensity;
- Quality and quantity of medical staff;
- Workload – number of games; and
- Workload – style of play – high pressing etc.
But also, given the trends under Rodgers, we need to consider other factors such as culture, propensity to use sports science, influence of the medical team, attitudes to risk, care for employees.
So, if it is to be Rodgers, we can but hope that the background sports science and technology is being improved but crucially attitudes are more aligned to player health being of utmost importance.
Tenaka Khan says
Love your work Alan – I remember well the debate surrounding the amount of injuries that we seemed to suffer under BR. I would offer three points that might minimise the risk relative to his previous tenure. Firstly I imagine that he’s inheriting a squad with a far higher base line fitness this time. Secondly he’ll be operating under the five subs provision. Finally sports science has surely advanced significantly in the past four years.
celticbynumbers@btinternet.com says
Hi Tenaka and thank you
Yes we can hope this will mitigate any issues caused by eg training regimes
I’ll give the benefit of the doubt at this stage but one to watch
Damian says
Complete pie in the sky speculation here, but could it be anything to do with the fact that he seems to favour quality players from the conventional big league team markets, but who for whatever reason are available to the teams he has coached? So you get ‘elite’ players with something wrong with them (Armani suits from a charity shop), which in turn means a higher likelihood of long-term injury issues?
Trying to think of specific examples but, off the top of my head, both Siminovic and Benkovic had the look of potential elite level players were it not for injury issues.
celticbynumbers@btinternet.com says
These players all missed 10+ games in 18/19 so you tell me:
Griffiths 41
Kouassi 40
Arzani 39
Bitton 38
Simunovic 23
Tierney 22
Boyata 20
Ntcham 19
Rogic 17
Benkovic 16
Ralston 14
Morgan 14
Gordon 13
Christie 13
Ajer 11
Hendry 11
Brown 10
Edouard 10
Damian says
Ha! Comprehensive response. They certainly don’t all match that particular description, no (though
maybe up to seven or so of them do). Wasn’t meaning to suggest it was the only (or even the most important) factor. But could be as valid a potential criterion as ‘bad luck’ or ‘quality and quantity of medical staff’?
Did all of those players miss that number of games through injury, specifically?
In any case, it was an excellent monologue from James, and this is a very interesting follow-up piece.
Binkabhoy says
Love your work Alan, thanks.
I remembered a quirk, the perennially injured James Forrest seemed to have his best injury free run under Rodgers!
Jim McClure says
Hi, I would be interested to know this analysis compares to other teams over the same period.
Jim
celticbynumbers@btinternet.com says
Hi Jim – this is very time consuming and manual research – feel free !
The Cha says
Looking at it a different way, other than the Invincibles, the best performance by this metric were under Deila and the Annus Horriblis at the end of the Lennon Interregnum.
How to explain this? Perhaps underperforming teams (relatively under Deila) don’t suffer as much injuries as they aren’t operating at the elite level that’s more likely to cause these.
The Invincibles are the real outlier for me, operating at elite level but sustaining non-elite level injuries.
Hopefully, we can bottle that and re-apply it under the “new” manager!
celticbynumbers@btinternet.com says
That’s fair and team style and training demand are factors
The thing with Rodgers is you see the same and Liverpool and Leicester
When a trend becomes a trend……………..
droid says
Training Pitch factor? https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/15595719