It’s all down to these freaking injuries. The quality has always been there.
Pity, but the sooner he departs the club in order to be replaced by a hopefully fitter player, the better.
Yes and the more you get injured the more you start to second guess your body, you end up constantly playing at 90% due to fear of breaking down again… For a midfield which relies on dynamism and energy that’s a big problem for us.
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Hmm wonder if the injury news will force out hand in the market at all? I’m completely on board with finding the right player and person etc. you still bodies on the pitch at the end of the day. Plus it’s so late it doesn’t feel right.
Guess we will find out how Keïta is doing at the Gaffers presser.
have had a couple of guys like this over the years, we like to call them “bubble wrap”
as in, we best buy him a bubble-wrap suit so he doesn’t hurt himself.
Really doesn’t make sense for both club and player. It’s about time to cut our losses and for him to move on to a less physical league.
The only club that play in a less physical league who might take him would be
FC Oliveira do Hospital of the Portugese league
Or a less physical sport.
Although I wouldn’t put it against him pulling a muscle in his lower back trying to serve a tennis ball.
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He wasn’t so brittle when he was at Leipzig. Missed just four games. Played a total of 5475 mins over two seasons.
Didn’t he miss a few due to suspensions?
Not relevant to the injury discussion though. Odd that it’s clearly a massive issue for us.
So I looked this up, because of what @Iftikhar said, and it looks like his injury record with us is, bizarrely not even that bad. It’s still not the best, but in the seasons with us he’s had (league games only) the following injury durations (I assume that if he’s not in the squad following an injury he’s not available) according to Transfermarkt:
- 2018-19: 8 games available, 3 games out, 19 games available, 1 game out, 5 games available, 2 games out. 3 injuries totalling 6 games
- 2019-20: 1 game available (but not used), 6 games out, 12 games available (but used sparingly), 4 games out, 4 games available, 1 game out, 10 games available. 3 injuries totalling 11 games
- 2020-21: 4 games available, 3 games COVID, 2 games available, 1 game injured, 1 game available, 1 game injured, 2 games available, 9 games injured, 8 games available, 5 games injured (presumably, although Transfermarkt does not cite an injury). 4 injuries totalling 17 games
- 2021-22: 5 games available, 1 game injured (again, presumably), 4 games available, 5 games injured, 5 games available, 2 games AFCON, 7 games available, 1 game injured, 8 games available. 3 injuries, 7 games out
Is he more injury-prone than Robertson? Probably. But compared to someone like Henderson? He gets more frequent injuries, but lasting fewer games each time.
I think the issue here is more the disruption to the team preparation from the frequency, rather than him actually being fragile and hopelessly broken, especially since they seem to be different injuries each time (apart from 2020-21, which I think was the issue from 2019-20 not being resolved properly, if I recall correctly).
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It’s made to look worse than it is for two reasons:
- it always tends to happen when someone else is already out and so we were relying on him
- on several occasions he has returned to fitness and just not been selected making his absence feel longer.
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According to Klopp he will be out for a while. Litmanen suddenly looks like a man of steal compared to him.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we don’t see another appearance in Red from Naby.
That could mean he is omitted from the 25-men CL team for first half of the season with Arthur taking his place.
@Derecho Was just thinking the same thing.
Of that list, the first 4 don’t even concern us? If anything, it suggests he was fine before us, and in fact, if you look at it, it’s mainly been his groin injury of 2019 that has persisted through to 2020 at least, that he didn’t recover from (and was acknowledged by Jürgen that he was being held back to give it extra time to recover, hence the 60 days in December 2020.
It’s a piss take, you can’t rely on him.
We don’t.