I’m not sure I understand the disagreement here, but the fact that he only lasted 20 minutes, for the second time this season, is a huge problem. I think the question as it relates to Slot is how much of this is just the natural end point of Joe’s career trajectory vs how much is Slot’s team’s physical preparation of the players leaving them undercooked and unable to cope with the demands of a game situation. Given the overall level of fitness the group as a whole seem to have I am inclined to not give Slot’s methods a pass on this.
For all the increased interest in a scientific approach to player preparation, injuries are still essentially black magic and any of these professionals who try to give you their evidenced based methods for monitoring injury potential and managing risk are either grifters or so unaware of their own limitations to know how dangerous they are. The reality is they are going to happen. And while there are things you can do to reduce the overall cumulative risk across a group of athletes where and when the injuries pop up are still going to be closer to random than they are predictable by any of these monitoring systems. The challenge with that is the Prem is so relentless (compare to France that is down to 18 teams and got rid of one domestic cup) that it only takes a small number of injuries before issues compound.
So eventually the injury bug will hit everyone. However, the questions about Slot’s methods and how little physical work they do in training leaves very serious questions about whether he is preparing his players to cope with the demands of a game situation and setting them up to fail like this. The lack of juice they appear to have in their legs collectively preventing them putting in a solid 90 minutes is the same thing that results in muscle tweaks occurring left right and center