Recurring catalogue of injuries? Manchester United last season suffered the worst injury list, with 39 serious injuries resulting in the players involved being unavailable for selection for a combined total of 1681 days!
As we know the injury crisis was not only in the heart of the defence with injuries to Anderson, Berbatov, Cleverley, De Laet, Fabio, Fletcher, Giggs, Hernandez, Lindegaard, Macheda, Nani, Rafael , Rooney ,Valencia ,Welbeck and Ashley Young to name a few. Each injury to the fore – mentioned player kept them out of action for at least 14 days each occasion.
Darren Fletcher’s bowel illness meant he missed 152 days as the Scotsman fights to rebuild his football playing career. While Tom Cleverley’s ankle injury side -lined the midfielder for 102 days as Cleverley continues to try to establish himself as a Manchester United regular. It’s an amazing feat that Manchester United recorded the 2nd best defensive performance registering 20 clean sheets while being crippled with injuries.
Losing only on an 8 goal difference to Manchester City, who suffered the least injuries of all the 20 Premiership sides.
Manchester City suffered 7 key injuries costing Roberto Mancini’s squad a total of 186 lost playing days in comparison to Manchester United 1681 days lost.
How would Manchester City have survived had they lost to injury long term their influential club captain Vincent Kompany ? .Yet the Manchester United players who were fit almost dragged the club over the finishing line without our Serbian rock in the heart of the defence Nemanja Vidic. However out of adversity step forward Jonny Evan’s and he was simply sublime filling in like a true soldier.
The review of the Premier league season 2011 – 12 note, hamstring injuries as the most frequent accounting for 46.5 % of all injuries.
The Premier League Injuries League 2011 – 12
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Club Significant injuries Days lost to those injuries Days lost on average
1 Man City 7 186 26.6
2 Chelsea 13 356 27.4
3 Wigan 11 474 43.1
4 Stoke 14 557 39.8
5 Wolves 18 690 38.3
6 Everton 21 716 34.1
7 Swansea 12 759 63.3
8 Liverpool 15 794 52.9
9 Blackburn 20 801 40.1
10 Aston Villa 21 806 38.4
11 West Brom 24 868 36.2
12 Sunderland 22 956 43.5
13 Norwich 14 968 69.1
14 Bolton 15 1054 70.3
15 QPR 19 1105 58.2
16 Fulham 33 1245 37.7
17 Newcastle 27 1258 46.6
18 Arsenal 28 1343 48.0
19 Tottenham 36 1450 40.3
20 Man United 39 1681 43.1
With Manchester United investing £13 million in a state of the art medical facility at the club’s Carrington training headquarters, the new medical centre as part of a 5 year partnership with Japanese company Toshiba will have the most up to-date CT and MRI scanners to enable the club to attend to injuries in-house in preference to accessing external health care. The football club clearly has identified the level of injuries particularly over the last two seasons are having a debilitating on effect on team selection.
A brief look at last season’s 38 League games players’ appearances with the injury table in mind. Compared to the league appearances of 10 of the Manchester United players who appeared in the 42 league match campaign of season 1958 /59.
Season 2011 / 12 League appearances. Season 1958 /59 League appearances.
Evra 37 Goodwin 42
Rooney 32 (2) Scanlon 42
Ferdinand 29 (1) Gregg 41
Evan’s 28 (1) McGuinness 39
de Gea 28 Charlton 38
Carrick 27 (3) Viollet 37
Greaves 34
Quixall 33
Cope 32
Foulkes 32
In your view, what was the problem with injuries at Manchester United during the last two seasons?
