Official Injury Thread 2013/14: Page 117 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Official Injury Thread 2013/14

Bosscielny

What sort of person calls someone else Dreamlord? 😆

awooga83

Saw an article in the telegraph looking at our injuries, quantifying the shocking numbers we have

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/arsenal/11308606/Revealed-The-truth-behind-Arsenals-terrible-injury-record-and-how-your-club-shapes-up.html

Seems to generally conclude that lack of recovery is costing us and that the reason may potentially be down to coaching staff/Wenger. I certainly don't believe the "we are just unfortunate line" and think there is something about players picking up serious injuries at young age and being impacted where they suffer an injury plagued career and how much we persevere with them to our detriment.

Anzac

awooga83 wrote:
Saw an article in the telegraph looking at our injuries, quantifying the shocking numbers we have

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/arsenal/11308606/Revealed-The-truth-behind-Arsenals-terrible-injury-record-and-how-your-club-shapes-up.html

Seems to generally conclude that lack of recovery is costing us and that the reason may potentially be down to coaching staff/Wenger. I certainly don't believe the "we are just unfortunate line" and think there is something about players picking up serious injuries at young age and being impacted where they suffer an injury plagued career and how much we persevere with them to our detriment.

Further to this IMO it is no coincidence that our least injuries occurred prior to 2007 as it was the last time we played our more open style utilising both space and pace, AND the last time we used developed players aged over 23 as our match day squad (other than Fabregas).

From 2008 we changed to a possession passing style playing back to goal and passing direct to feet, AND we promoted the development project to the match day squad to provide development via playing time. Add serious injury to a player still developing physically and we see imbalances in muscle development in recovery, combined with AW overplaying players because of a lack of genuine depth because of both quality AND injury.

The 25 man squad applies to payers aged over 21, yet AW prefers a core of 18 and the rest as kids introduced at age 18, but even the core of 18 includes a handful u21, despite that AW has said himself that he doesn't consider a player to be developed until they reach age 23 = 5 years of development via playing time before he makes a decision as to their status/quality etc.

Ray

It may also have something to with the Emirates pitch, we have had a horrendous injury record since moving there.

JazzG

Wenger confirms that Rosicky, Ospina & Sanogo are fit. Koscielny a possibility for Sunday, Ramsey might be fit next weeks game and Arteta + Ozil back in early January. So am hoping (touch wood) that we should have most of our squad back in January.

Klaus

What happened to Arteta, exactly? Hamstring? I know we rushed him back, twice, and ended up making it worse. It seems like he's been out for a while though.

Patters

awooga83 wrote:
Saw an article in the telegraph looking at our injuries, quantifying the shocking numbers we have

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/arsenal/11308606/Revealed-The-truth-behind-Arsenals-terrible-injury-record-and-how-your-club-shapes-up.html

Seems to generally conclude that lack of recovery is costing us and that the reason may potentially be down to coaching staff/Wenger. I certainly don't believe the "we are just unfortunate line" and think there is something about players picking up serious injuries at young age and being impacted where they suffer an injury plagued career and how much we persevere with them to our detriment.

Superb article. Proper journalism - about as refreshing to see as a good refereeing performance.

Arteta has suffered a setback. On the specifics, all I've read is 'calf injury'.

ludovicvanzis

Klaus wrote:
What happened to Arteta, exactly? Hamstring? I know we rushed him back, twice, and ended up making it worse. It seems like he's been out for a while though.

How do you know we rushed him back?

evoh

One former Arsenal player, however, told The Telegraph that Wenger’s training methods – which place an emphasis on relatively short but intense sessions – is a part of the issue.

“Players need more rest now and more individually tailored programmes but Arsene has his methods that he believes in,”.

Wenger Knows, and doesn't give a shit.

Ray

Then how comes injuries were never this bad pre 2007.

evoh

Rayman wrote:
Then how comes injuries were never this bad pre 2007.

Less intense games overall, able to turn off early in minor games after going 2-0 up.

Arsenal now play major intensity to the end of every fixture as there are too many teams able to give us issues, that wasn't the case pre 2007.

Klaus

We did have plenty of injuries back then too. It's just that we also happened to have the greatest player to ever set foot in Premier League, and he never seemed to get injured. No knee ligaments, no achilles problems, no ruptured hernias, no weak hamstrings or popped shoulders. Looking at his career stats at wiki, Henry only missed 8 league games between 2000 and 2004. Nearly all of our starters have missed more games than that this season alone, and we're not even past Christmas yet.

Klaus

To make the point clearer: If you had put a peak Henry in the team against Liverpool we would easily have won by a couple of goals. That's how ridiculously good he was.

You find us a player like that again, who never ever gets injured, and even this ragtag bunch can challenge for the league. If you can't find one (and we obviously can't, because we've been looking for 10 years and we still haven't done it) then you simply need to build a modern squad with enough depth to mount a challenge on four fronts though. There's no longer any God mode to activate.

lorddulaarsenal

In general better players don't get injured so much as they are better able to read situations to avoid it

Gazza M

id agree with that dules, and it applies to great teams as well. the more you dictate the tempo of a match, the more in control the players are with their body movements. the tempo/rhythm becomes natural for them, their bodies acclimatise. they know instinctively how to get themselves out of trouble, and dont have to stretch/over extend themselves to cover space because theyre well organised. when youre a rabble like us, youre running into blind culdesacs, or desperately trying to cover someones fuck-ups, and getting hurt in the process.

this is just pseudo babble, but ive noticed it alot with elite teams in te last 20 years

JazzG

Clearly something wrong, we've had players go and seek outside help and come back a lot better. IIRC RvP used his own trainer to create a training regime for him and it turned things around for him. Then look at players like Fabregas who had become quite injury prone in his last few years and how he has hardly picked up injuries again. I'd love to know who the fuck is doing these internal investigations. Hopefully after being here a season Shad Forsythe will bring his own people in and completely overhaul whatever the hell we are doing. Tony Colbert's name has always popped up when it comes to why our players get injured so often.

As for Chelsea, I've always had my own theory on why Mourinho hardly seems to rotate/rest players yet they pick up less injuries and recover better. I hear they are quite familiar to these methods on the continent! Apart from that though I do think generally their preparation and training methods are far superior. Even if they we were doing some unethical stuff it wouldn't make us go from all these injuries to being like them. There is a much more deeper problem here that the club hasn't resolved.

Klaus wrote:
We did have plenty of injuries back then too. It's just that we also happened to have the greatest player to ever set foot in Premier League, and he never seemed to get injured. No knee ligaments, no achilles problems, no ruptured hernias, no weak hamstrings or popped shoulders. Looking at his career stats at wiki, Henry only missed 8 league games between 2000 and 2004.

We broke him eventually though! I remember the 03/04 season, we didn't have a big squad that season as well. Towards the end of the season you could see our players were knackered (hence us getting knocked out by Man Utd & Chelsea in the FA Cup and CL). The players had been run into the ground and there wasn't that much scope for rotation. Extra few players and that should have been a treble there, was there for the taking. The next season when injuries hit we weren't able to recover though.

Gazza M wrote:
id agree with that dules, and it applies to great teams as well. the more you dictate the tempo of a match, the more in control the players are with their body movements. the tempo/rhythm becomes natural for them, their bodies acclimatise. they know instinctively how to get themselves out of trouble, and dont have to stretch/over extend themselves to cover space because theyre well organised. when youre a rabble like us, youre running into blind culdesacs, or desperately trying to cover someones fuck-ups, and getting hurt in the process.

this is just pseudo babble, but ive noticed it alot with elite teams in te last 20 years

True, for example in 03/04 we used to have the match finished within the first 30-45 minutes, you could see the 2nd half we were just controlling the game and keeping the opposition at arms length. Whereas like you say now there seems to be chaos in near enough every match we play. I remember Mourinho talking about this when he first came, how he wanted his teams to control the game and almost rest on the ball. We used to be like that, if we went 1-0 up back then it was game over. We'd pick and choose our moments carefully if we wanted to get a 2nd or 3rd goal whereas now even when we're 1-0 ahead we are getting caught up field and scrambling to get back. No in game intelligence from this current lot but the strange thing is we did show it in the first half of last season. We were strong defensively and didn't leave ourselves exposed. As soon as the injuries hit around Nov/Dec it all just went to pieces.

Anzac

Rayman wrote:
Then how comes injuries were never this bad pre 2007.

Adults v kids / men v boys.

Since 2008 the Youth Development Project was promoted to the match day squad.
AW has said that a player isn't fully developed & capable of repaying on merit until aged 23.
In 2008 all of Diaby, Walcott, Fabregas, Denilson & Song were all u23 = our entire midfield in both the 442 we started the season with AND the 3 man midfield after we signed AA.

Denilson debuted aged 18 in season 2006-07.
In season 2008-09 he was aged 20 and played 37 PL games and 51 total for the season.
In season 2011 when he went to Sao Paolo he was aged 23 and had 153 games since his debut for us.

Song made his debut in season 2005-06 aged 18 before going to Charlton on loan.
In season 2008-09 aged 21 he played 31 PL and 48 games in total.
In 2012 when sold aged 24 he had 205 appearances for us.

Walcott made his debut in season 2006-07 aged 17 & played 16 PL & 32 games that season.
Despite his injury record and missing much of the last half of each season this decade, other than last season he still plays 22-35 PL games a season and 30-46 games a season.
He is aged 25 and has 283 games.

Rambo was 20 when his leg was broken at Stoke - he already had 50 appearances for the senior team.
In his first full season back in 2011-12 aged 21 he played 34 PL games and 44 in total.
The following season he played 36 & 47, and played 24 & 34 last season despite missing 5 months with injury.
He is aged 23 and has 205 games since his senior debut in 2008-09 aged 18.

Wilshere made his CL debut aged 16 in 2008 & made his senior England debut aged 18 in 2010-11 after his loan at Bolton. In his first full season aged 18 he played 35 PL games and 49 for the season before his ankle injury put him out for all of 2012-13.
In his first season back 2012-13 he played 25 PL & 33 total, and then 24 & 35 last season.
He is aged 22 and has 148 games since his senior debut in 2008-09 aged 16.

Fabregas made his debut in season 2003-04 aged 16.
In 2004-05 in his debut league season he played 33 PL and 46 games in total.
When sold aged 24 he had over 300 appearances.

TH was aged 22 & had 160 senior appearances when signed. He played 30+ PL and 40+ games every season for 7 seasons until 2006-07, after which he was sold.
Pires was 23 & had 188 appearances when signed. In his 6 seasons he played a total of 189 PL games.
Ljungberg was 21 when signed and had 79 appearances. He only played 30 PL games in 2 seasons, and only played more than 40 games a season 3x.

Gunner89

Fabregas was being chucked onto rescue us in the Carling cup and FA cup against the likes of Ipswich, Leeds and Leyton Orient. That's how much he was overplayed.

Anzac

Gunner89 wrote:
Fabregas was being chucked onto rescue us in the Carling cup and FA cup against the likes of Ipswich, Leeds and Leyton Orient. That's how much he was overplayed.

IMO it's more a sign of the imbalance in the squad = a handful of top class players carrying a core of developing players, and a flawed strategy that has been exposed since the sale of RVP as the last top class player capable of determining a result / game breaker on merit.
As good as both the likes of Ozil & Sanchez, on their own they are not that sort of player.

Rex

Alexis certainly is capable of deciding close games on his own, and he has already done it on a number of occasions for us. Özil on the other hand is more dependent on others.

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