Celtic Buck Global Injury Trends (for now....)
Sports science investment, squad management and luck can take you so far - the latest update on Celtic's squad injury profile
The topic of injuries exercises us on the Huddle Breakdown probably more than is healthy. It is a variance factor that should be within the clubs’ gift to control to an extent.
Although I could say the same about some fans and corners!
We have seen spikes in player unavailability such as the soft tissue epidemic under Ange Postecoglou. Also, if you search the archive under Celtic By Numbers you will see that I have frequently written about Brendan Rodgers and historical injury trends.
Injuries are disruptive. Celtic seems to have two fragile players – Cameron Carter-Vickers and his foot and Kyogo Furuhashi and his shoulder – who are mission-critical. That is, their loss would likely be material to long-term team performances.
Tracking injuries is also problematic. The club don’t exactly advertise the health of players and we often rely on press conference updates. It would be great if football adopted gridiron conventions of a published injury roster.
Sites like transfermarkt.com do attempt to log against players their injury absences but this is spotty at best and likely relies on news reports as supporters do.
So, as best as I can, I have tracked injury absences in the squad so long as I have been collecting my data - from the start of the 2014-15 season.
Here are the up-to-date profiles as of the last weekend.
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