On the latest Huddle Breakdown podcast we were asked about the pros and cons should Brendan Rodgers be appointed next Celtic manager.
@jucojames discussed the injury profile and attitudes to risk prevalent at Celtic with reference to Kieran Tierney and playing through pain.
It reminded me that since July 2019 I had be highlighting the injury trends that seem to follow Rodgers around.
This piece highlights how at Liverpool the cumulative impact of player injury increased over his tenure.
Here I highlighted the impact as it unfurled at Celtic.
My parting comment was “I’ll continue to track”. So here we are.
Games Lost to Injury
Here’s the update on the average number of games lost to injury across the whole squad. The “squad” contains any player named in a match day.

The spike by the end of Rodgers’s reign remains the outlier amongst the managers since I started tracking my data.
Interestingly it also spiked a little during Postecoglou’s period.
Clearly every season sees a different number of games player and players used.
Players Missing Per Match
So, here are the average number of players missing per match day:

By this view broadly the same pattern emerges. It peaked with 18/19 Rodgers and an average 6.63 players missing per match.
What about at Leicester City? Is a reasonable next question.
Unfortunately I have not been able to easily scrape data from either Premier Injuries or transfermarkt . It would take a huge manual effort.
However, this piece from the Football Insider hints that Leicester were suffering league leading numbers of hamstring injuries during the 2021/22 season.
What we must bear in mind are factors such as:
Bad luck;
Propensity to have injury prone players in the squad;
Training intensity;
Quality and quantity of medical staff;
Workload – number of games; and
Workload – style of play – high pressing etc.
But also, given the trends under Rodgers, we need to consider other factors such as culture, propensity to use sports science, influence of the medical team, attitudes to risk, care for employees.
So, if it is to be Rodgers, we can but hope that the background sports science and technology is being improved but crucially attitudes are more aligned to player health being of utmost importance.