Shane Duffy, Jeffrey Schlupp, Gabe Forsyth, Lucien Mahovo, Ben Chrisene, Mathias Kvistgaarden, Amankwah Forson, Kenny McLean and now Papa Amadou Diallo needs surgery and will be out for at least 4 months. Season after season we have an extensive long term injury list which cannot be coincidence in my opinion and must call into question the training methods adopted at Colney.
I might be putting 2 and 2 together and getting 5, but I think this all comes down to pre-season when we started doing these European tours under Farke rather than staying in England and playing matches on home soil. For years most of the players have only been half fit when the season starts then bam bam bam injuries left right and centre. It is because most turn up to the season half fit and whatever is weakest in their bodies breaks, that is why there is 'no pattern' they are 'all different'. There must be an underlying cause to these injuries and I think it comes down to poor fitness at the start of the season, then at times they are rushed back and break down again. If a player isn't fit that you brought in from another club, there should be a player already at Norwich who can do the job for a game or two whilst the other come on with 30 mins to go to help them integrate into the team and get to the fitness levels required especially when you can have 5 substitutes in a game it's not like ye olden days when there were 0, 1 or 3 you can practically change out half the team if needed. There is no excuse, it was this lack of fitness that sunk us in the 'covid season' when we stopped half way through and came back and were exhausted. The issue with Norwich isn't the sporting director and one could argue that the head coach isn't totally to blame as it has been under multiple head coaches it is the fitness coaching, that is where it all stems from. Psychologically as well it would mean that all the new players don't come in expecting to be first choice and know that they can be when they are half fit. The players are not conditioned right at the start of the season, they come in under-cooked and we are playing catch up the rest of the season.
Whilst I agree with everything above, we did seem to try and take the slower approach with both Kvistgaarden and Diallo but they’ve still ended up with long term injuries. Something seems off as the facilities at Colney are top notch
I think the contractors for the Colney build were from Suffolk and they buried blue and white scarves and an old snotty hanky that was found in Bobby Robson's skip all around the training facility. It appears that the scarves have not rotted and are doing their hoodoo voodoo work on our squad.
The last time I heard it mentioned was in an interview given by Knapper. He was, as I recall, asked specifically about how much use was made of it. His answer was that it was always "fully booked", pointing out that it was available for academy players to use, not just the first team squad. While the Soccerbot tends to be thought of as one of Webber's innovations, I think it would probably be more accurate to view Farke and our ex-Borussia Dortmund players as having been important drivers of it. Dortmund had been using Footbonaut, a pre-cursor of Soccerbot, since first installing it in 2012. By the time Sargent joined us, Josh had already come across Soccerbot while at Werder Bremen. And although people also tend to think of Soccerbot as aimed primarily at improving ball skills, a major objective is development of cognitive skills, e.g. spatial appreciation and ability to make effective decisions quickly. I always think of Stiepi when people talk about Soccerbot. He had an uncanny knack of receiving the ball while tightly marked, and instantaneously passing it on to an unmarked team mate. Rather than uncanny, this apparently instinctive speed of thought and precise ball control may actually have been testament to the time he spent in the Footbonaut cage!
