Newcastle United have lost 434 days to injury this season having suffered 22 injuries in the first half of the campaign.
The Magpies sit at the top of the Premier League injury table with 12 players missing as boss Steve Bruce faces questions about his methods and the club’s approach to injuries.
Newcastle’s horrendous Christmas was capped by losing four players in less than 50 minutes on New Year’s Day as Bruce admitted that he’d asked Florian Lejeune to play while fatigued. The defender made two errors to gift Leiecester chances on a day to forget.
And that got even worse on Saturday as Newcastle lost two MORE players to injury at Wolves. Dwight Gayle and Paul Dummett were taken off while Joelinton played through the pain.
But does this isolated period tell the full story?
Independent analysis carried out for ChronicleLive by PremierInjuries.com show the club is actually in BETTER shape in terms of injuries than they were at the same point last season.
As of January 2, Newcastle have suffered 20 injuries this season – which accounts for 434 ‘lost’ days. In the 2018/19 season they had suffered 22 injuries by the same January 2 date – which accounted for 475 ‘lost’ days.
They had suffered 20 injuries by January 2 in the 2017/18 season, which was the first campaign in the Premier League after promotion from the Championship.
Ben Dinnery, who runs PremierInjuries.com and compiles injury data on top flight clubs, has recorded seven ‘soft tissue’ injuries this season. That is down from 13 at the same time last season as Newcastle suffer familiar issues.
For the purposes of collecting this data, the site only includes absences which extend past nine days – as anything less is considered a precaution. Dinnery said: “In the early part of the season, the record was much better this season but there is not a great deal of change in terms of the last three seasons at this point.
“That might surprise people, especially the fact that soft tissue injuries are actually down.”
There’s no doubt that things have changed under Bruce at Newcastle. His predecessor Rafa Benitez was a strong believer in the importance of conditioning and paid close attention to the reams of information the club now receive in terms of player’s individual condition.
Many of his methods have endured and it’s worth noting that Newcastle continue to lean heavily on the sports science investments made in recent years. Newcastle still retain the services of Orreco , the Irish-based sports science and data specialists who are pioneers in their field.
They work with things like blood markers to alert the club’s medical staff to potential problems – and the work of Jamie Harley, the club’s sports science chief, continues.
What has changed is the man at the head of it. How Bruce chooses to interpret that information will inevitably be different to Benitez and it may be the case that the Newcastle Head Coach leans more on players individual instincts when deciding whether to play them or not.
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