TAA Crocked
- Thread starter Irish_Red
- Start date
- Latest activity Latest activity:
- Status
Fabinho to step up.
Neco or milner even. Should have enough cover. Bloody more injuries.
As long as Thiago and fabs is back we will be fine..
And half of that is international games. If it is 4 weeks he will miss:
Leicester
Atalanta
Brighton
Ajax
Wolves
Midget Land
Fulham
If he was to miss numerous games it’s on a decent run for it to happen.
Does the 3 sub rule need reconsidering?
[article]
Jürgen Klopp has claimed next summer’s European Championship could be decimated by injuries if a compressed schedule is not addressed after Trent Alexander-Arnold was injured during Liverpool’s 1-1 draw at Manchester City.
The full-back will miss England’s upcoming internationals with a suspected muscle problem, having limped off in the second half of a match in which Gabriel Jesus’s strike equalised Mohamed Salah’s penalty for Liverpool. Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne missed a penalty just before half-time.
We The Liverpool manager pointed to how the strain of an unusually hectic fixture list caused by the coronavirus pandemic may have a knock-on effect on a rearranged Euro 2020.
“Hopefully we can play the Euros next summer but if we continue like this let’s see which players can be part of that,” Klopp said. “Trent will be out for England [for the three games]. What injury he has we don’t know but he cannot play for England and he is not the first and will not be the last that Gareth Southgate will miss. He’ll have a scan, then we will see.”
Klopp also voiced support for Ole Gunnar Solskjær following the Manchester United manager’s criticism of a schedule that took his side to Everton for Saturday’s 12.30pm kick-off having played at Istanbul Basaksehir on Wednesday night.
“We played [last month] after the international break at 12.30 on Saturday. Some of my players were coming back from Peru,” Klopp said. “These kind of things should not happen.
“I spoke about two weeks ago – in a meeting with the person responsible at the Premier League who organised the fixtures. We cannot change it [I was told]. It is not about Manchester United, Liverpool and City.
“Usually in the season we all have a [hectic] November and December. This year the October is like a December, the November is like a November and the December is still like a December. The 12.30 game – that is a killer. If the Tuesday [Champions League playing] teams are in contention for the Saturday 12.30 that is OK. But the Wednesday teams should not be.”
Klopp urged broadcasters to resolve the problem. “Sky, BT, the Premier League – they have to talk,” he said.
He also reiterated his opinion that the five-substitute rule should be reintroduced. Premier League managers were allowed five substitutions when football restarted after lockdown in the summer, reverting to three for this season.
“In my understanding it is a lack of leadership [from the Premier League]. It is not an advantage [for big clubs] – it is a necessity,” Klopp said. “In all other countries it happens.”
That view was supported by Pep Guardiola. “Today the right-back for the national team of England is injured. Tomorrow it will be another player. It is too much,” City’s manager said. “It is so demanding for the players – and is the same for all teams. I don’t understand how the Premier League understands [addresses] the situation.”
Guardiola is pessimistic about the prospect of changes being made. “I remember when I was a young player and I read the news from England – Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger complaining the same thing about what Solskjær is saying,” he said. “I don’t have any optimistic solution.
“They [broadcasters] cannot come together because each one looks for himself and his business. My business is to protect my players. LeBron James won the NBA and now he is going on holiday for two months, three months. Our guys have eight days because of BT and Sky.”
While stressing he did not have a clear view of the incident, Klopp was also the latest manager to complain about the handball law. The Liverpool defender Joe Gomez conceded a penalty when De Bruyne fired a cross at him from close range.
“Handball, offside, all these things – I don’t know why we get asked and not the rule -makers who can make a difference – and [they seem] the only people who think the handball law is exactly right. I can’t wait for the first time a player scores a goal with the armpit,” he said.
The draw leaves Liverpool third on goal difference behind Tottenham both having 17 points, while City are 10th with 12, having played one match fewer than the champions. Leicester are top with 18.
[/article]
[article]
Premier League clubs are yet to schedule a third vote on whether to allow five substitutions during matches despite growing pressure to reconsider – a decision that has been described as “peculiar” by the chief medical officer of players’ union Fifpro.
Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola and Liverpool’s Jürgen Klopp were among the managers to voice concerns over player welfare at the weekend amid the frenzied fixture list caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, with Trent Alexander-Arnold still awaiting the results of a scan on his calf sustained in Sunday’s 1-1 draw that has already ruled him out of England contention during the international break.
But it is understood that despite calls from Klopp, Guardiola and Manchester United’s Ole Gunnar Solskjær to introduce the additional substitutes that would bring the Premier League in line with Uefa competitions and other major European leagues, clubs have yet to even schedule their next shareholders’ meeting where any vote would have to take place.
A proposal to allow five substitutes from a total of nine players on the bench – as adopted during “Project Restart” during the summer – was initially voted down in August before being raised again ahead of the new season at the start of September and again being rejected.
Most of the support for retaining the extra substitutes is believed to have come from the top six, but votes from at least 14 clubs are required to pass a motion.
It is understood that the Professional Footballers’ Association has also written to the Premier League in the past to ask for clubs to reconsider, having also previously consulted Fifpro. The union – which represents more than 60,000 players worldwide – released a statement on Friday which said the current fixture pile-up lacks sufficient considerations for their “health, wellbeing and performance and requires an urgent and ongoing revision by competition organisers”.
“It was peculiar that the Premier League did not allow five substitutions,” Vincent Gouttebarge, Fifpro’s chief medical officer, told the Guardian. “By contrast, it is allowed in all the other major leagues in Europe and in the Champions League and Europa League, and it is obviously one of our recommendations. It would be nice to have the same everywhere because it provides the manager with an opportunity to rest some of his players and perhaps manage workload better. The Premier League is one of the most affected because it is the top league in the world and it attracts elite players who are also playing international football.”
A study commissioned by Fifpro after the 2018 World Cup in Russia found that 64% of the elite professional players believed they have insufficient rest between matches, with Premier League teams estimated to lose on average £45m due to injury-related reduction in performance per season as a result.
As well as the mandatory implementation of the five substitutes rule, they have also recommended that players are given a minimum of four weeks holiday for their off-season break and a flexible two-week in-season break, as well as committed to developing an online monitoring tool to track player workload and the impact of travel and injuries.
“It’s been two years since our survey and we have been repeating this message all the time,” said Gouttebarge. “The problem is escalating all the time. Fifa has also implemented an international window at the end of January and the start of February when there is normally only domestic football and it is going to be important that the players are given sufficient time to recover.”
He added: “I’m sure the people who are in lockdown at home are very happy to see European matches on Tuesday to Thursday and then they can watch their domestic competition from Friday to Monday. We have been engaged in such a cycle since approximately the start of September without any midweek breaks. It’s all about cumulative load – every player can play three matches in eight days but it’s very difficult when you are doing it without a break, as well as the physical and mental strain of competing and performing.”
[/article]
[article]
Just after the hour, Trent Alexander-Arnold, as he had done all game, chased back from inside the Manchester City half, tracking Raheem Sterling. The City attack broke down, and Liverpool went again to launch a counterattack. Sterling, trying to regain possession, fouled Joël Matip and earned a booking. Just behind him, Alexander-Arnold pulled up and sank to the pitch with a calf injury. Human bodies, even those of athletes, are fragile. Pulls and strains and tweaks happen. But in context, it was hard not to see Alexander-Arnold as the victim of the remorselessness of Covid football’s schedule.
Alexander-Arnold, who will now be missing for up to four weeks, has already played 1,137 minutes since his season began with a substitute appearance for England in the Nations League game in Iceland in September.
That is a little more than 12-and-a-half full games in two months – and despite being used relatively sparingly by Gareth Southgate and being taken off early in two games by Jürgen Klopp, even before the injury on Sunday. He is one of 26 Premier League players currently sidelined by the sort of soft tissue injuries that are characteristic of fatigue.
You don’t have to be the Dutch fitness guru Raymond Verheijen to diagnose a problem – and that is before another international break in which three games will be squeezed into the space that used to be allocated for two. England v Republic of Ireland friendlies rarely generate much sense of anticipation, but none surely has ever been approached in quite such a mood of bored resentment as this.
Injuries are not the only issue. The game is suffering as well. City v Liverpool began spectacularly. The first half was brilliant. Klopp’s unexpected switch to a front four unsettled City and the game was thrillingly stretched. City then worked out a way of countering that and hit back in the second part of the first half.
The term “intriguing tactical battle” is often a euphemism for lacking in incident, but not here: there was attack after attack, chance after chance, the game played at an astonishing pace.
City perhaps had the edge after half-time, and the central defensive pairing of Rúben Dias and Aymeric Laporte gave them a solidity they have not had in a season and a half. But then, just as the game should have been building to its great climax, nothing. There were 16 shots in the first hour of the game, one in the final half hour.
Perhaps there was an element of both sides settling for what they had – although City had talked bullishly before the game of the need to close the gap – but, equally, everybody was blatantly knackered. It is true, it had been a particularly energetic first half, and it’s also true that consistent rain had probably made the pitch as heavy as modern pitches ever get, but, still, this isn’t how the Premier League is supposed to be.
There are multiple causes, and numerous steps that could have been taken to mitigate the demands of the schedule. That they have not been highlights football’s general lack of leadership and the way greed so dominates the thinking that nobody can see beyond their own self-interest.
Klopp and Ole Gunnar Solskjær both highlighted the problems of teams competing in Europe and then playing the early match three days later, as Manchester United and Tottenham had to last weekend. And that does seem a simple matter to resolve, except that BT Sport has the 12.30pm TV slot on a Saturday. This weekend, given City v Liverpool was scheduled as Sky’s first pick for Sunday afternoon, and with three sides in Europa League action, that meant the best game available to it, had it ignored sides who had played in the Champions League last Wednesday, was probably either Crystal Palace v Leeds or Southampton v Newcastle. Enticing as both of those games may have been in the immediate context, it is understandable BT should go for the larger audience of a Manchester United game. Still, it is hard to believe compromise can’t be found.
During the second half of Manchester City’s 1-1 draw with Liverpool players were blatantly exhausted and the match suffered as a spectacle.
During the second half of Manchester City’s 1-1 draw with Liverpool players were blatantly exhausted and the match suffered as a spectacle. Photograph: Clive Brunskill/PA
Similarly, Klopp and Pep Guardiola both complained that the Premier League permits only three substitutions rather than the five allowed in the majority of European leagues this season, a proposal rejected by the majority of Premier League clubs. And while that may look petty as dozens of premium hamstrings twang across the league over Christmas, can they really be blamed, when the playing field is so slanted anyway, for resisting yet another measure that would advantage the elite?
Then there is the question of why all these games are being played at all. Why is football essentially pretending the 100-day Covid break did not happen? Might teams involved in Europe have been excused the League Cup this season? Do we really need this edition of the Nations League? We certainly don’t need the inevitable tedium of an England v Ireland friendly. And that’s before you get to more creative solutions such as running the Premier League on a group system this season, to reduce the number of fixtures.
It is all money, of course. The Nations League has to go ahead because Uefa’s smaller confederations need the revenue it generates. Similarly clubs need the League Cup and as many league matches as possible. But it is hard not to avoid the thought that if football’s financial structures were fairer, if the greed of the elite hadn’t jeopardised the very existence of the non-elite, this endless churn of exhausted football might not be necessary. And the victims in it all are the soft tissues of the players
[/article]
[article]
Jürgen Klopp has claimed next summer’s European Championship could be decimated by injuries if a compressed schedule is not addressed after Trent Alexander-Arnold was injured during Liverpool’s 1-1 draw at Manchester City.
The full-back will miss England’s upcoming internationals with a suspected muscle problem, having limped off in the second half of a match in which Gabriel Jesus’s strike equalised Mohamed Salah’s penalty for Liverpool. Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne missed a penalty just before half-time.
We The Liverpool manager pointed to how the strain of an unusually hectic fixture list caused by the coronavirus pandemic may have a knock-on effect on a rearranged Euro 2020.
“Hopefully we can play the Euros next summer but if we continue like this let’s see which players can be part of that,” Klopp said. “Trent will be out for England [for the three games]. What injury he has we don’t know but he cannot play for England and he is not the first and will not be the last that Gareth Southgate will miss. He’ll have a scan, then we will see.”
Klopp also voiced support for Ole Gunnar Solskjær following the Manchester United manager’s criticism of a schedule that took his side to Everton for Saturday’s 12.30pm kick-off having played at Istanbul Basaksehir on Wednesday night.
“We played [last month] after the international break at 12.30 on Saturday. Some of my players were coming back from Peru,” Klopp said. “These kind of things should not happen.
“I spoke about two weeks ago – in a meeting with the person responsible at the Premier League who organised the fixtures. We cannot change it [I was told]. It is not about Manchester United, Liverpool and City.
“Usually in the season we all have a [hectic] November and December. This year the October is like a December, the November is like a November and the December is still like a December. The 12.30 game – that is a killer. If the Tuesday [Champions League playing] teams are in contention for the Saturday 12.30 that is OK. But the Wednesday teams should not be.”
Klopp urged broadcasters to resolve the problem. “Sky, BT, the Premier League – they have to talk,” he said.
He also reiterated his opinion that the five-substitute rule should be reintroduced. Premier League managers were allowed five substitutions when football restarted after lockdown in the summer, reverting to three for this season.
“In my understanding it is a lack of leadership [from the Premier League]. It is not an advantage [for big clubs] – it is a necessity,” Klopp said. “In all other countries it happens.”
That view was supported by Pep Guardiola. “Today the right-back for the national team of England is injured. Tomorrow it will be another player. It is too much,” City’s manager said. “It is so demanding for the players – and is the same for all teams. I don’t understand how the Premier League understands [addresses] the situation.”
Guardiola is pessimistic about the prospect of changes being made. “I remember when I was a young player and I read the news from England – Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger complaining the same thing about what Solskjær is saying,” he said. “I don’t have any optimistic solution.
“They [broadcasters] cannot come together because each one looks for himself and his business. My business is to protect my players. LeBron James won the NBA and now he is going on holiday for two months, three months. Our guys have eight days because of BT and Sky.”
While stressing he did not have a clear view of the incident, Klopp was also the latest manager to complain about the handball law. The Liverpool defender Joe Gomez conceded a penalty when De Bruyne fired a cross at him from close range.
“Handball, offside, all these things – I don’t know why we get asked and not the rule -makers who can make a difference – and [they seem] the only people who think the handball law is exactly right. I can’t wait for the first time a player scores a goal with the armpit,” he said.
The draw leaves Liverpool third on goal difference behind Tottenham both having 17 points, while City are 10th with 12, having played one match fewer than the champions. Leicester are top with 18.
[/article]
[article]
Premier League clubs are yet to schedule a third vote on whether to allow five substitutions during matches despite growing pressure to reconsider – a decision that has been described as “peculiar” by the chief medical officer of players’ union Fifpro.
Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola and Liverpool’s Jürgen Klopp were among the managers to voice concerns over player welfare at the weekend amid the frenzied fixture list caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, with Trent Alexander-Arnold still awaiting the results of a scan on his calf sustained in Sunday’s 1-1 draw that has already ruled him out of England contention during the international break.
But it is understood that despite calls from Klopp, Guardiola and Manchester United’s Ole Gunnar Solskjær to introduce the additional substitutes that would bring the Premier League in line with Uefa competitions and other major European leagues, clubs have yet to even schedule their next shareholders’ meeting where any vote would have to take place.
A proposal to allow five substitutes from a total of nine players on the bench – as adopted during “Project Restart” during the summer – was initially voted down in August before being raised again ahead of the new season at the start of September and again being rejected.
Most of the support for retaining the extra substitutes is believed to have come from the top six, but votes from at least 14 clubs are required to pass a motion.
It is understood that the Professional Footballers’ Association has also written to the Premier League in the past to ask for clubs to reconsider, having also previously consulted Fifpro. The union – which represents more than 60,000 players worldwide – released a statement on Friday which said the current fixture pile-up lacks sufficient considerations for their “health, wellbeing and performance and requires an urgent and ongoing revision by competition organisers”.
“It was peculiar that the Premier League did not allow five substitutions,” Vincent Gouttebarge, Fifpro’s chief medical officer, told the Guardian. “By contrast, it is allowed in all the other major leagues in Europe and in the Champions League and Europa League, and it is obviously one of our recommendations. It would be nice to have the same everywhere because it provides the manager with an opportunity to rest some of his players and perhaps manage workload better. The Premier League is one of the most affected because it is the top league in the world and it attracts elite players who are also playing international football.”
A study commissioned by Fifpro after the 2018 World Cup in Russia found that 64% of the elite professional players believed they have insufficient rest between matches, with Premier League teams estimated to lose on average £45m due to injury-related reduction in performance per season as a result.
As well as the mandatory implementation of the five substitutes rule, they have also recommended that players are given a minimum of four weeks holiday for their off-season break and a flexible two-week in-season break, as well as committed to developing an online monitoring tool to track player workload and the impact of travel and injuries.
“It’s been two years since our survey and we have been repeating this message all the time,” said Gouttebarge. “The problem is escalating all the time. Fifa has also implemented an international window at the end of January and the start of February when there is normally only domestic football and it is going to be important that the players are given sufficient time to recover.”
He added: “I’m sure the people who are in lockdown at home are very happy to see European matches on Tuesday to Thursday and then they can watch their domestic competition from Friday to Monday. We have been engaged in such a cycle since approximately the start of September without any midweek breaks. It’s all about cumulative load – every player can play three matches in eight days but it’s very difficult when you are doing it without a break, as well as the physical and mental strain of competing and performing.”
[/article]
[article]
Just after the hour, Trent Alexander-Arnold, as he had done all game, chased back from inside the Manchester City half, tracking Raheem Sterling. The City attack broke down, and Liverpool went again to launch a counterattack. Sterling, trying to regain possession, fouled Joël Matip and earned a booking. Just behind him, Alexander-Arnold pulled up and sank to the pitch with a calf injury. Human bodies, even those of athletes, are fragile. Pulls and strains and tweaks happen. But in context, it was hard not to see Alexander-Arnold as the victim of the remorselessness of Covid football’s schedule.
Alexander-Arnold, who will now be missing for up to four weeks, has already played 1,137 minutes since his season began with a substitute appearance for England in the Nations League game in Iceland in September.
That is a little more than 12-and-a-half full games in two months – and despite being used relatively sparingly by Gareth Southgate and being taken off early in two games by Jürgen Klopp, even before the injury on Sunday. He is one of 26 Premier League players currently sidelined by the sort of soft tissue injuries that are characteristic of fatigue.
You don’t have to be the Dutch fitness guru Raymond Verheijen to diagnose a problem – and that is before another international break in which three games will be squeezed into the space that used to be allocated for two. England v Republic of Ireland friendlies rarely generate much sense of anticipation, but none surely has ever been approached in quite such a mood of bored resentment as this.
Injuries are not the only issue. The game is suffering as well. City v Liverpool began spectacularly. The first half was brilliant. Klopp’s unexpected switch to a front four unsettled City and the game was thrillingly stretched. City then worked out a way of countering that and hit back in the second part of the first half.
The term “intriguing tactical battle” is often a euphemism for lacking in incident, but not here: there was attack after attack, chance after chance, the game played at an astonishing pace.
City perhaps had the edge after half-time, and the central defensive pairing of Rúben Dias and Aymeric Laporte gave them a solidity they have not had in a season and a half. But then, just as the game should have been building to its great climax, nothing. There were 16 shots in the first hour of the game, one in the final half hour.
Perhaps there was an element of both sides settling for what they had – although City had talked bullishly before the game of the need to close the gap – but, equally, everybody was blatantly knackered. It is true, it had been a particularly energetic first half, and it’s also true that consistent rain had probably made the pitch as heavy as modern pitches ever get, but, still, this isn’t how the Premier League is supposed to be.
There are multiple causes, and numerous steps that could have been taken to mitigate the demands of the schedule. That they have not been highlights football’s general lack of leadership and the way greed so dominates the thinking that nobody can see beyond their own self-interest.
Klopp and Ole Gunnar Solskjær both highlighted the problems of teams competing in Europe and then playing the early match three days later, as Manchester United and Tottenham had to last weekend. And that does seem a simple matter to resolve, except that BT Sport has the 12.30pm TV slot on a Saturday. This weekend, given City v Liverpool was scheduled as Sky’s first pick for Sunday afternoon, and with three sides in Europa League action, that meant the best game available to it, had it ignored sides who had played in the Champions League last Wednesday, was probably either Crystal Palace v Leeds or Southampton v Newcastle. Enticing as both of those games may have been in the immediate context, it is understandable BT should go for the larger audience of a Manchester United game. Still, it is hard to believe compromise can’t be found.
During the second half of Manchester City’s 1-1 draw with Liverpool players were blatantly exhausted and the match suffered as a spectacle.
During the second half of Manchester City’s 1-1 draw with Liverpool players were blatantly exhausted and the match suffered as a spectacle. Photograph: Clive Brunskill/PA
Similarly, Klopp and Pep Guardiola both complained that the Premier League permits only three substitutions rather than the five allowed in the majority of European leagues this season, a proposal rejected by the majority of Premier League clubs. And while that may look petty as dozens of premium hamstrings twang across the league over Christmas, can they really be blamed, when the playing field is so slanted anyway, for resisting yet another measure that would advantage the elite?
Then there is the question of why all these games are being played at all. Why is football essentially pretending the 100-day Covid break did not happen? Might teams involved in Europe have been excused the League Cup this season? Do we really need this edition of the Nations League? We certainly don’t need the inevitable tedium of an England v Ireland friendly. And that’s before you get to more creative solutions such as running the Premier League on a group system this season, to reduce the number of fixtures.
It is all money, of course. The Nations League has to go ahead because Uefa’s smaller confederations need the revenue it generates. Similarly clubs need the League Cup and as many league matches as possible. But it is hard not to avoid the thought that if football’s financial structures were fairer, if the greed of the elite hadn’t jeopardised the very existence of the non-elite, this endless churn of exhausted football might not be necessary. And the victims in it all are the soft tissues of the players
[/article]
Last edited:
Yeah, I think so too. I pulled my calf running a few weeks ago while running a 5k. Limped around for a week maybe and was back running normally after 2 weeks.
Hang on - half the 4 weeks is international break, so in the other 2 weeks he misses 7 matches? No wonder Klopp is complaining about fixture congestion
I'm sure you are right, but want am I missing?
I think you're missing an 'h'.
We play Leicester the 21st (subject to tv changes) and Midget Land is the 9th of December. I never added the line of giving him a week to get back up to speed.
Fixed
Immediately, use covid as the initial reason then never bring it back
It's so not a priority right now (Jan) to be selling him. Why? What positives are there to sell him right now?
We will massively miss his creativity and drive.
Hopefully back in 3 weeks.
no way the 5 subs will come in. The lesser clubs don’t want it as it benefits the big Boys more with their squad depth
Hopefully back in 3 weeks.
no way the 5 subs will come in. The lesser clubs don’t want it as it benefits the big Boys more with their squad depth
That was the perception, but I think it is wrong. When the smaller teams start hitting two games a week (from December onward), they will start to get more muscle injuries too, and losing a few key players from their squads will actually have a much more detrimental impact that it does on us. They are starting to see that 5 subs will benefit them too.
5 subs allows you to rotate around 3 players in game; I have heard people ask - if Klopp was so adamant we need 5 subs, why did he only use 2 on Sunday? I think there are a couple of explanations - (1) having 5 subs allows you more flexibility to plan rotations (as we see him do in Europe when he gives Henderson one half), and so the "rotation changes" in a 5 sub game are pre-planned in a way that isn't possible in a 3 sub game, and (2) its prudent to always hold one sub back, at least until the final minutes, just in case of injuries - so if he had 5 subs he may only use 3-4 of them, but in an equivalent 3 sub game he would only use 1-2 of them
Last edited:
Surely Allison’s faith healing should step up?
God has been a cunt to us this season. If he actually existed.
Not Robbie, the make believe one.
I disagree. If 'he' doesn't exist then he can't have been a cunt.
I also disagree - nothing make believe about Robbie, he is the real God
- Status