THE PREMIER LEAGUE’S most injury-hit clubs of 2020-21 clash at Anfield on Saturday afternoon.
Harvey Elliott’s horrific ankle setback last weekend will have Liverpool fans fearing their bad luck is set to continue after last season’s woes.
And Crystal Palace head into the game without long-term absentees Eberechi Eze and Nathan Ferguson, who was one of the players on their long casualty list last year, too.
Statistics compiled by Premier Injuries show that Liverpool suffered the most individual injuries that resulted in players missing matches - with 54.
Jurgen Klopp’s side also had the highest total of days lost to injury with 1,722.
Champions Manchester City and second-placed Manchester United had players absent for totals of 720 and 766 days respectively.
Premier Injuries founder Ben Dinnery said: “You need your best players to be on the pitch week in, week out.
“The difference is 1,000 days and if you look at who made up those days, you can see the impact.”
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Of Liverpool’s longest absentees, six of the top seven were Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez, Joel Matip, Jordan Henderson, Diogo Jota and Thiago Alcantara.
But Liverpool were not the only club to suffer long-term injuries to key players.
Palace lost the second-most days to injury in the Premier League, with 1,365 – and the majority of those were accounted for by Mamadou Sakho, Wayne Hennessey, James McArthur, James Tomkins, Martin Kelly and Ferguson.
The latter, a full-back signed from West Brom in the summer of last year, is yet to make his debut after suffering three separate injuries.
The total number of injuries leading to missed matches in the Premier League last season was higher than for some time at 711.
But that included 69 because of players contracting Covid and 29 other reports of illness that could not be verified.
So despite the shortened pre-season and congested fixture schedules, the number of actual injuries was not remarkable and the total number of days lost was fewer than in many campaigns.
Dinnery said: “I think that managers and coaches realised they had to be more careful in the unique circumstances of last season.
“They may well have taken players out of the firing line for one or two games, when in a normal season they might have put them on the field.
“That would increase the number of injuries but reduce the number of days lost because they were trying to minimise the risk of serious or long-term problems.
“In recent years some clubs have started to use more of their squad – 19 or 20 players over the course of a season instead of 15 or 16.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
