It is difficult to know who had the bigger workload during an English Premier League festive period perhaps like no other — the players or the clubs’ medical departments.
Newcastle United manager Steve Bruce lost four of his players to injury — and was forced to play DeAndre Yedlin with a suspected broken hand — in a 20-minute spell around halftime during a game against Leicester City on Wednesday.
AFC Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe fielded already-injured players in his team’s loss at Brighton & Hove Albion days earlier, while Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson acknowledged having started star player Wilfried Zaha against Norwich City, despite knowing that he was carrying a problem.
Across a period where some teams were forced to play four games in an 11-day span, a Web site that compiles injuries in the league — Premier Injuries — has calculated that there were 53 reported injuries sustained by players.
“Like all things in life, it’s about quality over quantity,” said Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp, who has been one of the most vocal critics about the workload asked of modern-day players.
“If you have a good friend and you see him twice a year, it’s brilliant — the best time of your life,” Klopp said. “If you see him every day, you’ll think after five days: ‘What the heck?’”
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola, the owner of one of the best and deepest squads in world soccer, also spoke out Friday about the crammed nature of the festive period in England.
“Like I’ve said before, nobody cares,” Guardiola said, referring to soccer’s authorities. “And next season there will be more than 50 injuries in this period again.”
While most leagues in Europe take a break over Christmas and New Year, the English Premier League plows on regardless, continuing a tradition in England that saw — at its most extreme — top-flight teams playing on both Christmas Day and the day after until the late 1950s.
It is a dream for soccer-mad TV viewers — in England and around the world — but less so for league managers who are left to pick up the pieces as their squads are left in tatters from the heavy workload that often affects the quality of the games.
“The boys last night ran 13km,” Klopp said on Friday, after his team beat Sheffield United 2-0 at Anfield to restore their 13-point lead. “I can’t tell them: ‘Come on, try to run only 11km, so you’ll be ready for the next game.’ It doesn’t work like that. It’s more, it’s quicker, it’s more physical, it’s more demanding in more departments — but the schedule is the schedule. That’s the truth.”
Klopp called on all parties — soccer authorities, broadcasters and managers — to come together and discuss a solution, although he is not holding his breath.
“Try to think at one time in all these negotiations about the players,” he said. “Without the money, it doesn’t work. But without the players, it doesn’t work either.”
Wolverhampton Wanderers and Manchester City played two games in less than a 48-hour period — on Saturday and Sunday last week.
City, especially, have the capacity to rotate their lineup to keep players slightly fresher, but there was no such luxury for the likes of Palace, Newcastle and Bournemouth, who already had a long list of injured players.
“We have 10 out of 22 outfield players injured. It’s horrendous,” said Bruce, who added that he had never seen such an extreme situation in 40 years in professional soccer.
Hodgson said his players had done “extremely well during this period to actually get on the field and play.”
“Do you say we need to play what we think is near to our best team, and we put players on the field and risk that they are going to pick up an injury, or do we say we can’t afford to risk it with all the games we have coming up?” the 72-year-old former England manager said.
“It is a dilemma and I am still waiting for some bolt from the blue that will tell me what I need to do to solve the dilemma — but it hasn’t happened yet,” Hodgson added.
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