Tom Adeyemi

[Bluemike]

Stretchered off after 34 minutes of the U23 game today.

I'm actually getting sick of this now, just p*ss off FFS.

[herforder]

Unbelievable.......sadly not so. He makes Johnny Williams look like Bionic Man!

[Charnwood]

Well he wasn’t clobbered by anyone and simply pulled up which would suggest a muscle injury probably hamstring but only a guess. Hallam will be a better judge but possibly he wasn’t fully fit and returned too early or hadn’t warmed up properly. Either way it’s bad news for both player and club.

[herforder]

With the amount of medical and sports science expertise(?) available, would imagine he was assessed as fit to pull on the shirt with minimum risk. Perhaps he’s just one of those individuals who, although possessing skill, is just not physically cut out to be a professional footballer. Certainly his comparatively short and frusttrating period with us raises that question. (Not sure what his previous injury history is; have other clubs moved him on because of?)

[hallamblue]

Charny, I’ve been questioning this Club’s fitness, training and rehab regime for a couple of seasons now. This season is by far the worst in living memory, and I’m sorry but I simply just don’t buy this coincidence, bad luck story coming out of PR ( well MM anyway). The injuries are all long term, and as soon as a player gets anywhere near fitness , they breakdown again. We are 5alking professional players and supposedly top of the range fitness coaches, and medical staff. ......Are they though ??

[herforder]

What’s also interesting is that some players seem to be bionic, get clattered regularly, but carry on and are seldom out for continuously long periods. Whereas others, usually midfielders or strikers, appear to be made of feathers. That said, both Waggy and Garner, as strikers take regular batterings, run all day, and come back for more. Presumably all players go through the same basic training drills and physical testing, yet some seem more robust than others.

Maybe the ‘experts’ need to be better at identifying individuals’ physical strengths and weaknesses, and design programmes which achieve the overall fitness levels required, but in a more bespoke way? But no doubt that’s what would be said in response; just that the evidence doesn’t appear to support the reality.

[Watership Down]

The amount of injuries this club gets they should be renamed "Crystal Palace 2"

[hallamblue]

What’s also interesting is that some players seem to be bionic, get clattered regularly, but carry on and are seldom out for continuously long periods. Whereas others, usually midfielders or strikers, appear to be made of feathers. That said, both Waggy and Garner, as strikers take regular batterings, run all day, and come back for more. Presumably all players go through the same basic training drills and physical testing, yet some seem more robust than others.

Maybe the ‘experts’ need to be better at identifying individuals’ physical strengths and weaknesses, and design programmes which achieve the overall fitness levels required, but in a more bespoke way? But no doubt that’s what would be said in response; just that the evidence doesn’t appear to support the reality.

When I was doing my Masters at URA , we did a Sports injuries module , which was run by a tutor who used to be the head physio at scum city . All the pots slides were of bloody scum academy players lol so you can imaging my response!! However he brought up some articles ( scientific research papers) done by the FA about the incidence of injuries, types of injuries and which player positions were most at risk. Naturally knees / hips were high on the list and the leading position for injury was midfield. Suspect it’s all the changes of direction and tackles gkying in from every angle !
The tutors interest was developmental injury risks , ie Academy youngsters and the types of injuries they pick up and how professional clubs were led by science tegarding overuse injuries.

Incidentally this is where I think Town have gone astray with some of our players . And why I also question our training methods even for the seniors. I have no idea what they are doing at the Club at the various levels but our incidence of injuries SHOULD be ringing alarm bells IMO .

[Ricco]

Sorry for the length of post, but it's an interesting discussing to have if anyone fancies joining me!!

It's very hard to blame the club, but I am going to to a certain extent, I think the owner, manager, physio and even the fans have something to answer for. The owner should have invested in a larger squad with more players with proven reliability, the manager shouldn't stick with the same team, run young players in to the ground or risk recent recovers with 90 minutes so soon, the physio should have the final say and be able to overrule such bad decisions and the fans shouldn't pressurise the manager in to playing exciting young players by getting restless when they're rested. The players should also know their own body better than anyone, but I think they're exempt as it's easy, especially for an inexperienced youngster, to push themselves too hard in the heat of the moment and not think long term.

Obviously injuries can simply be bad luck, but the reasons below can either increase the chance or cause injuries.

1) Buying risky potentially injury prone players because they are cheaper

2) Bringing through academy players too soon and playing them too much because of lack of quality / squad depth / rotation

3) Rushing players back too soon, again lack of quality and squad depth

4) Training too physical, slowly breaks down players and makes them susceptible

If you don't take a risk with the squad as thin as ours and resources as strangled, then you're not going to get anywhere, that is a big problem I feel, the scariest thing is our track record with youngsters is just shocking. Jordan Rhodes until recently has been pretty good injury-wise, but he is the only player that has grown up here and survived football at a high level in recent years I feel?

The pace of the modern game is very athletic and dynamic, I think almost too much for 17-19 year olds personally. When you look at the weight the legs and knees of some of these youngsters, you are asking for problems, I mean have you seen anyone with legs like Dozzell last more than a few games in a competitive league? It was an accident waiting to happen, did the fans pressure the management, is the owner culpable because he left the manager with few options, should the pyhsio have stepped in? Who knows, but I would've been rich if you could bet on sports injuries, obvious. I felt exactly the same with Nydam, he has shorter, stockier legs than Dozzell, so less susceptible to nasty injuries like Dozzell's, but the pace and effort he was putting in and the long competitive games he was being asked to play, he was obviously going to burn out and so it proved. Emyr Huws was another case of particularly bad management I feel, I believe first game back he was given single digit minutes and then he was asked to play 90 minutes in the very next match (could be wrong) but that's ludicrous and again asking for trouble.

Players with notable injuries this season and possible reason...

Andre Dozzell - Risked in the first team too soon, far too lightweight
Tommy Smith - Just one of those things, has good injury record
Luke Hyam - Perhaps played too much as a youngster and is paying the price now
Emyr Huws - Risky signing and not eased back in to the team slowly enough perhaps because of desperation
Teddy Bishop - Played too much as youngster, paying the price for playing a full season in a top league at just 18
Tom Adeyemi - Risky signing maybe being rushed back a little soon?
Flynn Downes - Maybe too much too soon and desperation
Tristan Nydam - Obvious accident waiting to happen, overplayed at such intensity
Adam Webster - Risky signing, but still young, I think he will be ok long term
David McGoldrick - Risky signing, always going to get injured occasionally
Grant Ward - Should be ok, but young and always susceptible if overplayed

So not many of the injuries are question mark free, but it would be harsh to point a finger in all cases because you have to take risks when you have no money and a thin squad. You also have to train hard to keep up with the other teams etc etc. Very tricky, basically what it boils down to is f*ck off Marcus Evans...

[Dubai Blue]

Ricco, some good points in there that even a non-medic like myself can understand. Nevertheless there is a lot of speculation in respect of our players. Sure, science will no doubt say that it's necessary to ease players back from injuries, but who is to say that they were not? I'm sure science also provides plenty of evidence backed measurements to understand how a player is recovering and I would be shocked if we were not using them.

Generally our club has, I believe, a great reputation on the physio side. So I assume that we are using all of the currently respected metrics. I don't believe that we personally have any good reasons to support the accusations that you have made, tempting though it is to speculate. Of course I would be happy to be corrected on that (actually unhappy ).

[marko69]

If you don't take a risk with the squad as thin as ours and resources as strangled, then you're not going to get anywhere.

This sentence is very true, and it basically should eliminate all blame towards Mick McCarthy.

[Bluemike]

My personal feeling is that there is no great mystery to our injury problems or that we do anything wrong, I was at games this season where several players picked up their respective injuries either through tackles or turning their ankle or whatever, Hyam and Bishop as we all know are injury prone, we all saw the latest Bishop one and I can remember back to Hyam's problems starting at Cambridge in pre season last season, he then got hacked again against Rotherham I believe so no great conspiracy theory to any of them, Adeyemi may be the only one that is odd but again I doubt it is anything the club are doing wrong, just rank bad luck.

[Ricco]

Agree with all 3 of you, but I do have to say that I saw Nydam's problems coming a mile off, I myself wanted to shout down to the lad to pace himself, that wasn't bad luck, 17 years old, running like his life depended on it, I do put some blame on McCarthy for that, "hip and groin" injuries are nearly always overuse injures, not a rolled ankle or bad challenge. One things that is good and bad about McCarthy is he doesn't change a winning team lightly, but in Nydam's case, he needed some nursing and saving from himself.

I wouldn't place any more blame other than that. The rest, as you said Dubai, is speculation and they're more than likely just unlucky fairly unavoidable injuries. However I do think if McCarthy had a bigger squad at his disposal and was able to rotate occasionally when players had niggles, we would have less injuries than we do now, ipso facto some were avoidable and Evans is a

[Dubai Blue]

Ricco we cannot argue with your point about larger squad size that's for sure. It would be interesting to compare our injury woes with other championship sides. Especially those like Leeds who are not blessed with parachute payments and probably also rely heavily on youngsters coming through. We tend only to see only our own picture. I guess those stats would be hard to come by though.

One thing is for sure, if the only way for clubs without parachute payments to compete with those who have, is to push younger players into injury and shortened careers, this should be addressed somehow.

But I won't hold my breath.