Celtic Count the Cost of Success
Celtic prepare for their first European Qualifier as Wimbledon still progresses, and already there are injury doubts. Bayo joins Rogic on the side lines.
With a Treble Treble, and European Qualification become ever more elongated and arduous, are Celtic paying a price for success?
Are Celtic simply playing too many games and having insufficient recovery time to keep the squad fresh and fit? Or is it just down to the vagaries of luck?
Injury Record
Over the last five seasons, the number of injuries per season is as follows.
Games Lost to Injury = the sum count of the number of matches all squad players lost to injury over the season.
The Players Named in Squad includes all players that made at least the bench on at least one matchday.
The % Change column shows the increase or decrease in Games Lost to Injury over the season.
Between Deila’s two seasons, there was a small increase in players lost to injury.
Then, in Rodger’s first Invincible season, the Games Lost to Injury actually decreased by 5%. This highlights once again how that season was a golden one where Expected Goals was exceeded, long shots went in and injuries were manageable.
What has happened since is a 46% increase in Games Lost to Injury in 17/18 and a further 58% increase on that during 18/19.
From losing 182 playing days to injury in 16/17 Celtic lost 418 playing days to injury last season.
That is surely down to more than (bad) luck?
Injuries Per Player
There are variable numbers of players used in each season.
Here is the graph showing, on average, how many matches each player lost to injury in the squad:
In 14/15, on average, every squad player lost 5.08 matches to injury over the season. By 18/19 this has more than doubled to 10.45. EVERY squad player, on average, missing over 10 games to injury.
Clearly the reality is a few players missing many games and some missing few.
But is there another squad in world football with this absence rate?
Injuries Per Match
Each season there are a different number of matches. I calculate the average number of players missing per match below.
On average, Deila had between 3 and 4 players unavailable every match.
The same was true for Rodgers until last season when 6.63 players were unavailable per match, on average.
Why Is This Happening?
I don’t have the Sports Science or Sport’s Medicine data and so can only speculate.
Factors of impact include:
ever shortening Summer breaks;
travel to far flung parts of “Europe”;
difficult playing conditions regarding heat and humidity;
a variety of quality of pitches both domestically and in Europe (artificial / poor quality);
increasing number of games;
increasing number of high intensity games (more qualifiers, more quarter, semi and finals);
the additional strain of international travel, play, tournaments;
the cumulative impact of all of the above.
Summary
The cumulative cost of three years playing at the highest level of intensity going for all competitions is taking its toll on the Celtic squad. Injury absence has increased over 100% in five seasons. Celtic miss over 6 players each and every match. Each squad member now averages missing over 10 games a season to injury.
Hopefully the medical team at Celtic are always pushing the knowledge forward in regards to recovery and conditioning.
Success comes at a very human cost for Celtic. It’s why they have a large squad.