Merseyside clubs are currently suffering from a combined 12 injuries in the Premier League as of 26th February 2025, Liverpool with three and Everton with nine.
Interestingly over half of these injuries, seven, are related to the knee and hamstring with Northern Ireland’s Conor Bradley being the most recent addition to this list with his hamstring injury sustained against Aston Villa.
Arne Slot is awaiting further diagnosis on the injury sustained by Conor Bradley during the draw at Aston Villa this evening 💬
— Liverpool FC (@LFC) February 19, 2025
Stuart Goldfinch, 34, clinical lead at Functional Movement Physio in Liverpool said he believes the calendar in high level football is becoming too demanding and pressures on clubs and players to perform is damaging player welfare.
Mr Goldfinch said: “There has been an increase in demand to get more out of players. We’re increasing more loads through each player regularly, games, training, they want to get as much out of that athlete as possible before they retire.”
“In football you see notoriously hamstrings because of when people are accelerating and decelerating that’s when you use the hamstrings. There has been an increase in ACL injuries as well as the two are interlinked.”
As seen in the graph above, hamstring and knee injuries dominate the statistics. This is not a phenomenon exclusive to this season, in the 2023/2024 season. 655 time loss injuries occurred across last season with over a quarter of these being hamstring related.
This was an 11% increase from the 2022/2023 season but notably it also saw an 18% increase in the return to play timeframe, so not only are injuries to the hamstrings becoming more frequent they are also becoming more severe.
"You can play 40-50 games at a top level but not 60-70" 🗣️
Rodri says the increased workload for players in the current schedule is "too much" ⚽ pic.twitter.com/rie3CWKDnL
— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) September 17, 2024
Mr Goldfinch added that he believes there is a direct correlation between increasing injury numbers and severity and the neglecting of medical teams opinions at high level football.
He said that this is due to the sheer amount of money in football that’s driving the decision making processes in Premier League clubs, with a culture of coaching opinions overriding the medical departments.
“If there’s any sort of monetary drive there’s always going to be difficult decisions to make across the board. It’s a bit like a business if you have staff leaving all the time and you’re not looking after them then you’re haemorrhaging money anyway.
“There needs to be a shift in culture, right from the bottom, from the grassroots in football so that it trickles all the way up to high level Premiership football.
“In my time in rugby they worshipped the medical team. The respect that we got from grassroots rugby all the way through was completely different to when I worked in professional football.
“My experience in football is that you’re pretty much on the outside, and that’s detrimental.
“That’s not hearsay for every single team but in my experiences the culture needs to change in a lot of football clubs.”
Across the Premier League, there are currently 87 confirmed injuries and with the calendar schedule the unfortunate reality is that there are bound to be more in the near future.
In professional opinions, knee and hamstring injuries are the most revealing of heavy schedules and overworking, 57.47% of current injuries fit this category and statistics are damning for the English top flight.
Only time will tell if more is done to protect player welfare.
Data used provided by premierinjuries.com and premierleague.com
Featured image: Andrew Yates/Sportimage Credit: Sportimage Ltd/Alamy Live News used under Alamy agreed usage
