Is being injury prone a coincidence?

So Jones slips in the Arsenal game, and of course manages to damage his ankle. Vidic slipped in an earlier game, and sustained ligament damage ruling him out for the season. Fabio and Rafael both returned from their "twinjuries", only to both go out and get injured again. Just our luck with injuries this season.

But is it really luck, or is there something else going on? Although it's difficult to pinpoint the exact cause, I think that maybe "injury breeds injury", so to speak.

When a player comes back from a long term injury, he's often susceptible to niggles and tears (Hargreaves and Saha being obvious examples). But maybe something similar happens with team-mates. Maybe when players see enough of their colleagues go down, they start to think "**** I'd better not get injured". Maybe this increased fear of injury creates a tension that actually makes injury more likely. So when a player suffers an accidental slip, he "happens" to fall the wrong way, where if he was more relaxed he would've fallen the right way. I swear that Vidic knew he'd sustained serious damage, before he'd actually sustained the damage. He knew that he'd fallen the wrong way.

Maybe I'm just speculating and there's nothing in it, but it seems to me that when everything's going well and the squad is fully fit, players "fall the wrong way" less often. I think there could also be some kind of trench mentality, of seeing fallen comrades and believing that you're under siege. The more under siege you are, the more a siege mentality is relevant, necessary and justified. Maybe in a roundabout way, City are helping to cause United's injuries by racheting up the pressure?

Just a few thoughts, make of it what you will.

 

I blame the FA and Howard Webb

 

And I blame the French

 

We do have a large squad nowadays, so in that sense, I suppose injuries are more likely.

But for the last 2-3 seasons, injuries have ruined our team, time and time again.

 

The "injury begets injury" thing has another dimension too. With so many players out we have been unable to rest and rotate the squad as much. Jones was a prime candidate for injury cos he's already played 28 games this season, which is as many as he played in the whole of last season. The fatigue on a 19 year old who is still developing physically meant something would eventually have to give, just like fat Ronaldo back in WC98.

I reckon if Rio had been fit it would have been him and Evans at CB with Smalling at RB and Jones rested. But Rio injured means Jones has to play, and now Jones is injured. It's a vicious circle, and I reckon we may see a lot of young and fringe players out against Liverpool (like we had against Arsenal in the FA Cup last year) to try and give our experienced players a bit of a rest. I'd expect to see Berb and Hernandez up front, and maybe one of the twins on the wing to rest Nani with Fryers replacing Evra. The FA Cup's important, but when we're so badly hit by injuries something's got to give.

I also think a lot of it is down to having such a young squad. The initial injuries seemed to hit the younger players (Jones, Anderson, Cleverley, Welbeck), and this is what's caused the fatigue which is injuring the older players. They're still all developing physically, and are lacking the experience that might have helped them avoid getting injured. I guess it's one of the problems with bringing youngsters through - Arsenal have the same issue - and one of the reasons City haven't had an injury crisis. They have just bought a whole load of 25-30 year olds and bypassed the whole development issue - their only recent injuries have hit Balotelli and Richards, their only two regular young players.

 

I agree to some extent, but what category do Vidic, Ferdinand, Fletcher, Anderson, Young and Owen fall into?

 

Vidic falls into stp's original argument - he came back from his calf injury and got injured straight away afterwards. Likewise Ashley Young - got a minor injury, came back too soon and then got another one. Those two could probably have been avoided if other people hadn't been injured around the same time.
Ferdinand is getting old and injury prone - he's in the twilight of his career and injuries are always going to happen. Ditto Owen, who was always pretty injury prone to be honest.
Fletcher has a serious medical condition - not much could have been done to avoid that.
Anderson just seems very injury prone - he damaged his knee ligaments after his first season with us and they don't seem to have healed well since

 

Fergie mentioned recently that the training facilities at the club allow a player to maintain a level of fitness, despite injury, in order to get them back playing quickly. They work on as many muscle groups and joints as they are able to in order to keep a level of conditioning. Maybe it means we bring people back too early?

The injury saga makes me appreciate two things even more. How incredible it was that Ronaldo avoided serious injury, especially during 07/08 season and also how incredible it was that the '99 team stayed mostly injury free for the run in and decisive games.