Official Injury Thread 2013/14: Page 121 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Official Injury Thread 2013/14

Patters

speedy wrote:
Patters wrote:
We had a couple of seasons when Van Persie was captain where we weren't fucked over by injuries. It was still bad - (the great fullback crisis of Jan '13) but at least Van Persie stayed fit so we were ok. But it's incredibly frustrating now to have the best squad we've had in years and again this injury situation has completely wrecked us. Telegraph did a piece on it - what happens here isn't natural. Unbelievable that the club can't figure out where it's going wrong.

A lot of players are self medicating at other clubs in our league. Not serious anabolics but hormones that serious aid recovery times. They can inject at night and pass a piss test in the morning, that's why Wenger calls for blood testing in football. Level the playing field a little. But they literally cant be caught under the current testing protocols and will bounce back between games.

Our medical staff was terrible but they brought a lot of new guys in.

Interesting. Given there has been no public discussion of this - let alone warnings or fines - what does Arsenal have against these injections? If other clubs are doing it we are voluntarily handicapping ourselves.

speedy

There's no discussion because nobody is doing testing that can catch it. Its illegal so nobody can admit to it. So if nobody can admit to it or be caught then there's nothing to spark a discussion.

Klaus

Wait - they don't do blood tests in football? What the fuck. What kind of backwards sport is this?

speedy

Na just piss mostly after games when the players cant actually piss there so dehydrated especially with some lad staring at your cock. Stagefright, they get ripped if they take ages by the other players.

Even at clubs the drug testers just come to the ground they have to be brought through so you can hold them up at any level waiting. Your supposed to do a roll call every morning and when they arrive you give it to them. But nobody does. You just do it when there outside. But you could mark anyone as sick because sick players are contagious and don't come to training. Theirs always a couple on the sick list that will train in there local gym.
In house drug testing goes on more but again its only a piss test and mostly for recreational drugs so you can transfer any bad apple before he fails a test.

Klaus

Jesus. I've always wondered how the Spanish clubs get away with their well-known doping schemes. Why is football so far behind sports like ice hockey and swimming in this aspect?

speedy wrote:
In house drug testing goes on more but again its only a piss test and mostly for recreational drugs so you can transfer any bad apple before he fails a test.

So when Mutu failed that in-house drug test it was essentially Chelsea who made sure to get rid of him by ruining his career, as has been speculated?

speedy

Klaus wrote:
Jesus. I've always wondered how the Spanish clubs get away with their well-known doping schemes. Why is football so far behind sports like ice hockey and swimming in this aspect?

speedy wrote:
In house drug testing goes on more but again its only a piss test and mostly for recreational drugs so you can transfer any bad apple before he fails a test.

So when Mutu failed that in-house drug test it was essentially Chelsea who made sure to get rid of him by ruining his career, as has been speculated?

Mutu was burned im not sure why, in house drug testing is done quietly. You don't report it if a players fails, only those who need to know would know. You just ship that guy for full transfer value in the next window before anything gets out.

Chelsea went scorched earth on Mutu destroyed his value then sued him for the loss they created. That seemed very personal. And made no sense from Chelsea perspective.

Football is avoiding a scandal by not testing. No positive tests = no problems. Remeber Wenger saying hes signed players with irregular high red blood cell counts that returned to normal after a couple of months. And he asked to bring in blood testing a couple of times.

Irishgunner

I bet Mutu banged one of abramovich's daughters.

speedy

With the right doping team we could be muscle bound freaks like bayern. And run constantly and press for 90 min without showing fatigue like Barca.

yuv

Are you saying that's how they really get it done? no real "world class teams" or great coaches, just a very slick
drug scheme?
And are you suggesting that the whole thing is a huge conspiracy that would benefit all as it gets the game played at a higher level>get more following>secure better deals> money money?

(not that I'm doubting, but interesting if you could say something on the source of this information?)

Klaus

speedy wrote:
Football is avoiding a scandal by not testing. No positive tests = no problems. Remeber Wenger saying hes signed players with irregular high red blood cell counts that returned to normal after a couple of months. And he asked to bring in blood testing a couple of times.

I do remember that. I always wondered if it was Henry and Vieira he was referring to. One came from Juve, the other one from Milan. Serie A, and those two clubs in particular, had well-documented problems with this stuff in the noughties right before the huge drug scandal. Zidane admitted to taking creatine too for muscle growth, which wasn't illegal in Italy at the time but was practically everywhere else.

Klaus

yuv wrote:
Are you saying that's how they really get it done? no real "world class teams" or great coaches, just a very slick
drug scheme?

Yuv, do me a favour and google the following names: Eufemiano Fuentes, Luis García del Moral, Operación Puerto Doping Case, and Yannick Noah (add a "+spanish athletes" on the end).

There's a very strong connection between Spanish top flight football and disgraced doping doctors. It's not even a secret. Fuentes showed seasonal doping schedules he had drawn up for several Spanish clubs to that french L'Equipe journalist. Spanish football clubs were allegedly also the ones pushing hardest behind the scenes to have the court destroy all of Fuentes's records after the cycling scandal broke.

What speedy says doesn't surprise me at all. What surprises me is the utter lack of serious testing.

est

speedy wrote:
With the right doping team we could be muscle bound freaks like bayern. And run constantly and press for 90 min without showing fatigue like Barca.

Sounds good. Get it done, Ivan!

goon

Barca did show fatigue though, they usually dropped their intensity significantly soon after half time.

yuv

Klaus - I'm not saying true or false, I have no way of knowing obviously. Like you, I don't exclude anything.
If indeed the logical connection does exist (which theoretically seems sound), and there's no real fuss about getting it done in reality
(no serious scrutiny, no teeth) then it would be very reasonable to assume something, even a very big something, could be going on.

As for your nonchalant acceptance - well, that is just wrong. If indeed all the above is going on, it's a very big deal. I'm sure you know it yourself.
It is just about regarding the very existence of football ("as we know it", etc.).

BTW, think speedy was putting Bayern in that group (of super teams running on artificial), which makes this a bit beyond a spanish affair.
2 biggest Spain clubs+Bayern=biggest clubs in the world (fuck Manu 🙂 ).

Anyways - very interesting. Sorry for being such a bore, but I'd still like to get an idea about where all this rather explosive data is coming from?

Klaus

yuv wrote:
As for your nonchalant acceptance - well, that is just wrong. If indeed all the above is going on, it's a very big deal. I'm sure you know it yourself.
It is just about regarding the very existence of football ("as we know it", etc.).

I'm not trying to sound nonchalant. It's just that I've read about this stuff for a decade now and nothing gets done. I'm surprised you've missed the debate.

And it's not just Spain. Remember the Juventus trials? Or Jean-Jacques Eydelie's book about the scandal in Marseille? He claimed that they got doped up in the dressing room right before the Champions League final. The only player in the entire squad who refused to take anything according to Eydelie was Rudi Völler, who was absolutely furious and had to be contained by his teammates. He was so angry that he tried to beat up Bernard Tapie with his fists.

Isn't it curious how no one has sued Eydelie for that book? Tapie tried to sue for libel initially but retracted when it was clear Eydelie and L'Equipe wouldn't back down. Right afterwards more players, like Cascarino, stepped forward and confessed to taking injections too.

mdgoonah41

its a really tough issue. when you start digging, you don't know what you'll find. and if you're in a position of authority, and your organization relies on gigantic entities like real madrid, bayern, barca, etc to generate revenue for you, you begin to question whether it is best to go digging.

suppose there is some sort of mandate and tens of high profile players are found guilty of doping/cheating...then what? then you bring the integrity of the sport into question, when fifa already has massive credibility issues. then you have to figure out what the punishment will be. if the punishments are too lenient, you further destroy your credibility. if the penalties are tough, then it goes back to what i said above. imagine ronaldo, benzema, modric and sergio ramos getting caught doping and getting suspended for 6 months or a year or whatever.

to put in tough testing, you essentially need buy-in not only from the organizing bodies like fifa and uefa, you need the players to buy in too and agree to standardized testing. good luck with that.

Klaus

mdgoonah41 wrote:
suppose there is some sort of mandate and tens of high profile players are found guilty of doping/cheating...then what? then you bring the integrity of the sport into question

Indeed. But it's already being questioned by pretty much everyone. Either the sport has integrity or it doesn't. It doesn't cease to exist if everything is brought into light - it just proves that it was never there to begin with. And that's what people are really afraid of, I imagine. Isolated club incidents are survivable, even if some heavyweight would have to face the axe. But when most clubs are involved...

Bold Tone

Hope something gets done so it doesn't get to levels it got to in Cycling.
As an aside, has it crossed anyone else's mind how below par the star players perform at the recent World Cups?

lorddulaarsenal

Arteta's Arsenal career all but done now

invisibleman18

Sigh, so that's them two effectively out for the season putting us dire need of immediate signings for the first XI. Of course, we're messing about quibbling over some kid. Same old same.

« Previous Page Next Page »