I could never be bothered to check that exact number, so thank you very much. That makes his injury record look, well… Should I stick with “worrying”?
There were noises around Mamardashvili being out on loan for two seasons before journalists starting to run the story of one year because Kelleher will be sold the next summer. With every injury Alisson suffers (and it’s his second one this season), my fears are growing that he will be around for two more seasons before he’s sold or his contract expires, and Mamardashvili given the run in the team.
According to Transfermarkt, it’s 50 games and taking @RER’s point about the games he should have missed had it not been for Covid, we’re talking about around 20% of games of his Liverpool career. Of course, that doesn’t make him Alcantara, Lallana or Sturridge but it’s worrying for a player who runs the least on the pitch and who’s the best in business and has been for a few years now.
Absolutely it’s concerning when you factor in the above estimate of ~20% of games missed. What’s even more worrying for me is how he injured himself, literary just an innocuous kick from a back pass - either he came back too early; he needs to change his warm-up routines; or he’s not got long left at the top.
Keeper for a team that dominates possession can be tough. We usually think about the mental alertness problem that comes with doing nothing for 40 minutes and then suddenly having to make a stop. But the physical problem is there too. His warmup may be fine, but when he went down he had not actually made a save in over 10 minutes and had perhaps 3 touches. As you say, not a problem with a 24 year old, but it is probably going to be an increasing problem for him.
It doesnt really change anything. Short of a goalie having to unexpectedly extend themselves, which he didnt, goalies are not doing anything that should lead to this sort of injury unless there are pre-existing issues that make their fitness a bit of a house of cards.
FWIW though, it was the sequence before where he did it. Virgil passed the ball back to him from a free kick and he hit it long into the palace half and immediately collapsed. The camera panned away to follow the ball so unless you are specifically looking for it you wont see it. Palace collected the long ball and went on the attack and on the very edge of the screen you can see Ali having to literally hop to get himself back into position before Trent intercepted a pass and played it back to him. And that is kind of another frustrating part of it as by not making it really apparent he wasnt in position to continue he wasn’t too far away from setting Trent up for a bizarre own goal. If you look at how labored he was trying to get back into position to deal with the palace attack there are a wide range of balls back from Trent that would be otherwise totally reasonable in that position that Ali just would not have been able to get to.
Ali, is the consummate professional and I would image he pushes himself in training, also to be a keeper you do need explosive reactions and the starting position and movement to make saves, knees flexed, means the hamstrings are always shortened whilst the kicking motion is the opposite, extension of the hamstring.
I’m sure the physios are working on strengthening and flexibility of his hamstrings but it is something that he will have to be aware of and keep warm during games etc.
He may well be a great pro, but he tore a hamstring by simply making a normal kick of the ball. There no way around seeing this as an incredible degree of physical fragility, especially as it is not the first time he sustained a multi week injury from simply kicking the ball.
We all love Ali, and really don’t want to consider a Liverpool where he’s not number one, but with Mamardashvili coming in next season and probably Kelleher moving on (although we say that every season), does that mean Ali becomes number two behind Mama? Given his injury record, can we afford to keep Ali as number one? Surely some assurances were given to the new GK in negotiations.
We really can’t catch a break regardless of the medical staff and training methods.