Man United football director John Murtough has announced that the club has launched an investigation into the ongoing injury crisis at the club, as reported first by the Daily Mail on Friday.
Manchester United have been battling major injury issues even before the 2023/24 season kicked off and shortly after this DM report, Murtough confirmed at a fans’ forum that the club is now seriously looking into this.
“There are some strong mitigations for the mixed results so far, including 16 first-team players being injured or unavailable for periods since the start of the season,” the football director said.
“That’s two-thirds of the squad and means that Erik has not been able to pick his strongest XI once this season. Thankfully, we’ve started to see some of the injured players returning and that should make a difference, including our new signings Rasmus Hojlund and Mason Mount who are still bedding into the team.
“We’re also looking at why we’ve had so many injuries to see if there’s any patterns to improve prevention in future. Some of them have been impact injuries such as Kobbie’s and Amad’s, which are unpredictable. Others have been muscular and could reflect the sheer volume of games played over the past year, including last year’s World Cup.”
Man United have played 11 games so far this season and the club has already lost six of those matches. While several things are to be blamed, the long list of injury problems has been one of the biggest kickbacks for the Dutch manager.
Currently, as many as seven players are out injured with Lisandro Martinez and Aaron Wan-Bissaka being long-term absentees. The pair will be out for several weeks while the other centre-back Raphael Varane is recovering from a minor ankle problem.
Varane has already missed a few matches this season while summer Mason Mount has also spent time on the sidelines.
Man United have been all over the place this season and while Ten Hag’s lack of decision-making has been a big issue one of the major reasons why the manager has failed to make a statement with his tactics is because he’s constantly changing his starting XI. For starters, he has not been able to maintain a stable backline with so many major players missing. ETH has had to use Sofyan Amrabat at left-back along with playing Bruno Fernandes out on the right wing, a position where he is the least effective.
The football calendar has been massively crowded will all the extra games and that’s a big reason why so many players are picking up soft injuries. The winter World Cup was where all the mess started and unnecessary tournaments like the Nations League have just aggravated the problems
Man United aren’t the only club who are missing so many players because Chelsea are also floating in the same boat. The Blues currently have 13 absentees with important players like Nkunku, Reece James and Ben Chilwell all out for several weeks.
It’s hard to predict what the internal investigation will bring forth, maybe Man United will change their medical team and bring in some fresh perspective but unless the number of games is reduced and players are given problem rest, these injuries are just going to mound up. Unfortunately, instead of going down the number of matches will just keep on increasing in the coming seasons, especially with the new UEFA Champions League format.
