United set to snap up highly rated Arsenal physio Jordan Reece

Pogue Mahone said:
Which has almost nothing to do with the medical team.
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Lisandro returned twice given green light and end up with same injury, which means the medical and rehab team didn't do their job.

I am sure it happened with Shaw and Mount too who both had many delays and shite recoveries getting injured again, and couple of other players who prolonged their injuries and if I am not mistaken some players had to take same operations twice.

Also if the players are getting same injuries you don't think medical team should suggest our coaches that something is wrong?
 
diarm said:
You're laughing if you think he or any other strength and conditioning coaches work with little or no input from the medical department. Players have tailored plans there days which delve into incredible detail. The department Gary O'Driscoll has been brought in to oversee will oversee more than just mending legs and rehab.
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I don't know as much much about doctors in football but in cycling, what @Pogue Mahone says is true.

Training, peaks, conditioning, fatigue resistance training is not handled by the doctors at all. Doctors are responsible for two things: 1) Recovery of riders from injury and b) How to dope without getting caught

We have situations where cyclists are on zero carb diets or going full ketosis in a sport which burns 4,000 calories per day. Why? Because Doctors are not consulted, it's not their role. It's the fitness coaches role, who are not qualified doctors.

I'd imagine a football doctor is the same. In fact, Dr Fuentes from Operation Puerto goes into detail in his testimonies about what he did for footballers, and training load/regimen was not part of that.
 
It's about time we started overhauling our medical department, it's been a joke for years. We've arguably ruined a few careers through mismanagement of injuries.
 
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AfonsoAlves said:
I don't know as much much about doctors in football but in cycling, what @Pogue Mahone says is true.

Training, peaks, conditioning, fatigue resistance training is not handled by the doctors at all. Doctors are responsible for two things: 1) Recovery of riders from injury and b) How to dope without getting caught

We have situations where cyclists are on zero carb diets or going full ketosis in a sport which burns 4,000 calories per day. Why? Because Doctors are not consulted, it's not their role. It's the fitness coaches role, who are not qualified doctors.

I'd imagine a football doctor is the same. In fact, Dr Fuentes from Operation Puerto goes into detail in his testimonies about what he did for footballers, and training load/regimen was not part of that.
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At no point did I mention doctors. I was speaking about the medical department, which covers a lot more than just the doctors.
 
horsechoker said:
Can you really be that incompetent in such a high profile job?
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Are you really doubting that after watching United signings for different club positions over last 10-15 years? We have spend hundreds of millions on poor players, we have signed incompetent managers, CEOs, football related people, and you don't think it's possible we have wrong people in our medical team? Football team that has probably worst injury record in the league in last 10 years.
 
horsechoker said:
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:lol:

Thought it’d be a matter of time before someone pulled out the Dunning-Kruger curve in response to all the armchair pundits who struggled through high-school science questioning the competence of a bunch of high profile postdoctoral physios and musculoskeletal medics.
 
Bastian said:
Aye, and when he left Arsenal had virtually all their team available throughout the season. Go figure.
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Using practises set up by their Head of Medical for the past six years, Gary O’Driscoll. Go figure.
 
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Does make me mad that all along we've had the pull to poach all these top rated people from other clubs and we just haven't been doing it. The Glazers should be publicly flogged for their negligent mismanagement of the club.
 
Rozay said:
When our players get injured playing men’s football, our resident bricklayers and teachers will claim that this guy is a useless medical expert.
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At least if you need a wall building in Northern Ireland, the Caf is well equipped with specialists in the field.
 
Blood Mage said:
Does make me mad that all along we've had the pull to poach all these top rated people from other clubs and we just haven't been doing it. The Glazers should be publicly flogged for their negligent mismanagement of the club.
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We’ve been doing that all the time. Scouts, first team coaches, gk coaches, academy coaches etc.
 
el_loco_bielsa said:
:lol:

Thought it’d be a matter of time before someone pulled out the Dunning-Kruger curve in response to all the armchair pundits who struggled through high-school science questioning the competence of a bunch of high profile postdoctoral physios and musculoskeletal medics.
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I liked that in the examples he gave of identifying a bad bus driver it was someone who commits vehicular manslaughter which can be compared to United's injury woes. Even if we spoke about incompetent bus drivers you could point out more realistic examples like not following the route, arriving late, missing stops etc.
 
Well it makes sense that this is the first appointment we are looking to make given our plague ridden season.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
His CV is second to none. It is quite funny that we poach him from a club with a diabolical injury record, that immediately cleared up when he left, while our own injury record plumbs new depths.
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:lol:

So true!
 
Skills said:
The quality of the medical staff at this club is impossible to judge - along with scouts and all the other functions. The culture at this club allows the manager to overrule pretty much all of them, and they all take a backseat.

The biggest example of that was when Ole played Rashford in that FA cup game with a back injury, that put him out for another 2 months. You could have the best medical staff in the world but if they're not empowered by the club to make decisions based on their expertise, it's pointless.
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So, by this reasoning, nobody (except for the manager) is accountable.
The fact is that the club personnel, by and large, should be replaced top to bottom.
I hate seeing people lose their jobs, but the rot set in when Fergie left and it is getting worse.
Our league performances this season were the worst since SAF retired.
Something drastic needs to be done.
 
Bastian said:
Aye, and when he left Arsenal had virtually all their team available throughout the season. Go figure.
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If i was him I would spin that as 'My job here is complete'. Hopefully it is a sign of a job well done.
 
Amar__ said:
Lisandro returned twice given green light and end up with same injury, which means the medical and rehab team didn't do their job.
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This isn't true. The injury he got at West Ham was an impact injury and had nothing to do with the metatarsal fracture he had struggled with until that point.

When the metatarsal injury resurfaced at the beginning of the season it was reported that he had been to several doctors to get clearance. It was apparently impossible to see if it was fully healed or not due to the screws that were put in during surgery. Martinez being Martinez pushed to play and it was too early. Not much the medical department could do when Licha himself said it was fine and they had no evidence to the contrary.
 
OsloRed said:
This isn't true. The injury he got at West Ham was an impact injury and had nothing to do with the metatarsal fracture he had struggled with until that point.
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Also a completely different part of his body! The WHU injury was to his knee.

When the metatarsal injury resurfaced at the beginning of the season it was reported that he had been to several doctors to get clearance. It was apparently impossible to see if it was fully healed or not due to the screws that were put in during surgery. Martinez being Martinez pushed to play and it was too early. Not much the medical department could do when Licha himself said it was fine and they had no evidence to the contrary.
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I hadn’t heard those details before. Interesting. I do know that metatarsal injuries can sometimes be quite complex and slow to heal.

His most recent injury was a calf strain. And it would be very common to get a muscular injury like that after being away from regular football for as long as he was.
 
diarm said:
This clearly hits a nerve so I understand you feeling a bit precious. I'll try to explain myself a little more clearly and ask you to remember that I haven't criticised an individual, but merely the same department as a whole that the club is clearly in the process of overhauling.

I am not a professional footballer - but I can tell the difference between a good player and a bad one by taking into account a number of factors pertinent to their position.

I am not a professional football coach - but I can tell the difference between a good coach and a bad one, by taking into account things like games won vs games lost over a length of time.

I am not a professional bus driver - but I can tell the difference between a good driver and a bad one by taking into account number of cyclists and signposts knocked down over a ten year period.
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How do you know though that the injury issues we're having are due to our medical tests before signing or the strength and conditioning training? There are more potential reasons than that that might be affecting our injury record.

Take your bus driver example. You'd simplistically compare the amount of accidents between two drivers and come to a conclusion about which is the worse driver. You wouldn't look at how much pressure was put on them and from where and if they were having to cut corners to meet targets, the difference in the routes they take and how many accidents happen in general on those routes e.g. rural vs city areas, the nuances of what happened during the accidents, and so on.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
His most recent injury was a calf strain. And it would be very common to get a muscular injury like that after being away from regular football for as long as he was.
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Yeah, it was to be expected really. People are already writing him off as injury prone and that is way too early. He has been a mixture of very unlucky and a bit too eager to play this season, nothing that points to him struggling with injuries going forward. Hopefully he gets some rest over the summer but that might be a tall order given that there is the Copa America coming up.
 
Well, based on my 15+ years coaching cross country, track and field, and soccer, I have my own opinions. I'll also preface them by saying one thing I do not know is the process implemented within the club to bring someone back from injury. I think the problems United have are two-fold.

The first is that I suspect we don't properly warm-up and cool-down from our workouts and performances. I come to this conclusion because of the sheer quantity of muscle injuries we have, hamstrings in particular. Having dealt with similar issues when I took up my cross country team and later my track and field team, I had to implement better processes for athletes to prepare for and come down from practices and performances. I have watched a bit of pre-game warmups for United, what little they show on the broadcasts, and they don't always seem to be taken seriously. They go through the motions well enough, but don't watch the bodies, watch the faces. Again, that's just my interpretation.

The second is that, in a similar vein, I suspect we don't properly prepare the athletes coming back from injury. That said, MOST of that depends on feedback from the player, who wants to get back to playing as soon as possible. Personally, I had athletes refrain from complaining because they knew I'd sit them to get them healed up. My game was long-term; they wanted to run. You can have a prescribed wait time for each injury. You can have a battery of tests to say they're alright. Those things might need to be reviewed. But ultimately, you have to trust the athlete to know where he is and be honest about it.

So what do you do? You have to create the proper culture to teach the athletes to respect the process. It's harder than you think. But the state of things the last several years indicates that we need something new. Maybe this will do the trick.
 
OsloRed said:
This isn't true. The injury he got at West Ham was an impact injury and had nothing to do with the metatarsal fracture he had struggled with until that point.

When the metatarsal injury resurfaced at the beginning of the season it was reported that he had been to several doctors to get clearance. It was apparently impossible to see if it was fully healed or not due to the screws that were put in during surgery. Martinez being Martinez pushed to play and it was too early. Not much the medical department could do when Licha himself said it was fine and they had no evidence to the contrary.
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That's my bad then.
 
horsechoker said:
I'm no medical expert but some of the things people say are accusing staff of medical malpractice.

Maybe it's true but I don't understand why somebody would get so far in the field only to risk ruining their career.
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It was the same with Harold Shipman though.
 
Gator Nate said:
Well, based on my 15+ years coaching cross country, track and field, and soccer, I have my own opinions. I'll also preface them by saying one thing I do not know is the process implemented within the club to bring someone back from injury. I think the problems United have are two-fold.

The first is that I suspect we don't properly warm-up and cool-down from our workouts and performances. I come to this conclusion because of the sheer quantity of muscle injuries we have, hamstrings in particular. Having dealt with similar issues when I took up my cross country team and later my track and field team, I had to implement better processes for athletes to prepare for and come down from practices and performances. I have watched a bit of pre-game warmups for United, what little they show on the broadcasts, and they don't always seem to be taken seriously. They go through the motions well enough, but don't watch the bodies, watch the faces. Again, that's just my interpretation.

The second is that, in a similar vein, I suspect we don't properly prepare the athletes coming back from injury. That said, MOST of that depends on feedback from the player, who wants to get back to playing as soon as possible. Personally, I had athletes refrain from complaining because they knew I'd sit them to get them healed up. My game was long-term; they wanted to run. You can have a prescribed wait time for each injury. You can have a battery of tests to say they're alright. Those things might need to be reviewed. But ultimately, you have to trust the athlete to know where he is and be honest about it.

So what do you do? You have to create the proper culture to teach the athletes to respect the process. It's harder than you think. But the state of things the last several years indicates that we need something new. Maybe this will do the trick.
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To be fair, most of the players who were out were all pretty injury prone even before they joined us, or have been injury prone for a long time
- Shaw has missed multiple seasons due to injury
- Martial, crock of the top order
- Mount had a torrid last year at Chelsea
- Varane has always been injury prone
- Hojlund, we knew what we were getting into at the start of the season. He's had one injury and a short spell out since but that's it.
- Mainoo had an unfortunate event at a pre season game. He's been fine since he came back.
- Malacia had a freak injury and a weird setback, can't really pin this one on the load
- Eriksen had a cardiac arrest a few years back. Any game he plays is a bonus. Was never supposed to be our primary resource.

Lindelof and Martinez were the odd ones out who had multiple injuries in the same season.

I honestly don't believe a top tier premier league club, especially one the size of United, would not focus on basics of sport load management. The more logical explanation is that we've been daft in recruiting crocks and relying on them to be our primary resource for the entire season.
 
bringbackbebe said:
To be fair, most of the players who were out were all pretty injury prone even before they joined us, or have been injury prone for a long time
- Shaw has missed multiple seasons due to injury
- Martial, crock of the top order
- Mount had a torrid last year at Chelsea
- Varane has always been injury prone
- Hojlund, we knew what we were getting into at the start of the season. He's had one injury and a short spell out since but that's it.
- Mainoo had an unfortunate event at a pre season game. He's been fine since he came back.
- Malacia had a freak injury and a weird setback, can't really pin this one on the load
- Eriksen had a cardiac arrest a few years back. Any game he plays is a bonus. Was never supposed to be our primary resource.

Lindelof and Martinez were the odd ones out who had multiple injuries in the same season.

I honestly don't believe a top tier premier league club, especially one the size of United, would not focus on basics of sport load management. The more logical explanation is that we've been daft in recruiting crocks and relying on them to be our primary resource for the entire season.
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The Malacia one was reported on by The Athletic in quite a lot of detail.

The player insisted on using a doctor and a surgeon in The Netherlands, who left cartilage behind in his knee after operating. He then went back to those same doctors to try and resolve the issue when it resulted in a setback. They did not resolve the issue; another setback ensues.

That suggests that we truly cannot judge our medical staff, because they just don't have any control over what goes on. I'm sure I've read of some of our other players insisting on using other physicians and the club allowing it, but I can't recall the specifics. Pogba might have been one?
 
I think there are two separate issues here:

1. The treatment of injuries and the rehabilitation process, which the medical and sports science departments are directly responsible for.

2. The prevention of injuries through effective load management and injury risk assessment. This involves the coaching staff, fitness team, medical department, data department, and sport science department. The medical, sports science and data people can make all the analyses and recommendations in the world but if they aren’t listened to by the coaching staff or players, you will get wonky results. So this is clearly a much bigger challenge than just having the right people. It’s about having a seamless integration between the multiple departments, and a clear process for decision making.

What I have heard from behind the scenes, is that there was a serious disconnect this season between the coaching, fitness and medical teams whereby individual training programs recommended for older, rehabbing, or injury prone players were largely ignored by the coaching staff (ETH), in favour of a ‘one size fits all’ fitness approach; and that this resulted in a ton of soft tissue injuries. If that is accurate, then I am sure it will be part of the season review currently underway. I only know, from what I’ve been told, that the medical/sports science people were not approving of the training methods when it came to injury prevention and load management.

This might be a case of people deflecting blame where no blame is due. It could just be bad luck. But given the consistently high rates of injury, one has to logically conclude that somewhere along the pipeline there is a serious issue with how players load management is being handled; and it’s hard not to put that on the coaching and fitness teams. Most clubs that experience consistently debilitating injury problems do so because of a problem in training methodology, going all the way from pre-season preparation, right through to load management throughout the season. The groundwork for fitness and injury susceptibility is often laid during pre-season, and again, from what I heard pre-season fitness work was excessive. While the fitness training loads remained too intense throughout the season, not allowing enough time for recovery and stretching many players loads beyond the levels recommended by the sports science team.

The evidence would certainly support that claim, although it doesn’t account for alternative explanations, and as such I don’t entirely discount the possibility that it wasn’t the fault of the coaching staff
 
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Luke Shaw on his injuries: “It’s kind of everyone’s fault. Partly my fault, partly medical staff, I think everyone would admit that”.

“I felt something against Aston Villa and came off at half-time”.

“The scan came back and there wasn’t too much there. But I didn’t train all week, then trained the day before the game”.

“If the manager asks me to play, I’m never going to say no…”.

“I shouldn’t have played”.
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What would Shaw know about our medical stuff, right guys?
 
To me this all sounds positive. It looks like we’re making changes in our back room staff and it seems it’s needed.
We should be demanding best in class all across the staff and players so all of these appointments seem to be headed in that direction.
Next up, get rid of Antony and any other useless, overpaid players.
 
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