Jose Mourinho blames them for Chelsea's failure to win the Premiership last season. And if it wasn't for a whole catalogue of them Newcastle might not have been so abject in recent years.

Indeed, injuries play a huge part in a team’s season and it seems that they will always haunt particular clubs or players. But maybe, just maybe, these casualty crises are not the result of a Merlin jinx, as many fans tend to believe. What if they are related to how the players are trained and how many minutes they play per week?

Chelsea were yesterday reported to have only 11 fit players. And that's before a ball is kicked in anger. Old Trafford also has its share of crocks but, of those, only Paul Scholes came to grief in the pre-season build-up. The likes of Gary Neville, Louis Saha, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Park Ji-Sung have all been carrying injuries from last season.

‘Chelsea played six games in the space of just 16 days on two different continents. All of a sudden, the injuries they have had to deal with are no longer a surprise.’


In the Chelsea camp, the situation is rather different. While Michael Ballack and Andrei Shevchenko have been nursing knocks suffered last season, the majority of Chelsea victims like Didier Drogba and John Terry have picked up or aggravated injuries during the pre-season.

If it is all just a curse, then Chelsea look set to be the next hard hit team, taking over from Newcastle United. The treatment room at Stamford Bridge has been constantly busy since the horror injury to Petr Cech in October, when he suffered a depressed fracture of the skull against Reading. There is no doubt that some of those injuries have only been the result of bad luck, however something seemed peculiar – there were more and more injuries, and the players took much longer than expected to recover. But there could be another crucial factor that might have triggered the ‘plague’.

I have not followed the pre-season friendlies with much interest, but one thing I have been keeping an eye on this summer is the results of the top five teams in England for those warm-up matches. The first thing that struck me was the amount of games Chelsea have played. Looking back I did find out that they played six games in the space of just 16 days on two different continents. All of a sudden, the injuries that Chelsea have had to deal with are no longer a surprise. However Chelsea are not the only team to play an outrageous amount of pre-season friendlies, so why are they the most affected?

Bad luck might play a part, but what is more likely to be the cause of the ‘injury curse’ is the treatment of the players by the club. Chelsea boss Mourinho admitted he made a mistake when he rushed Terry back to action last winter after his skipper had undergone surgery, so one would think that he learned from his mistakes. Instead, he has again been hit by a number of short-term injuries suffered by players who have been pressed back into action.

The first was Wayne Bridge. The full-back had still not recovered from a hip injury he picked up with England earlier this summer when he aggravated it in training. As if that was not enough defensive trouble for Mourinho, he chose to play Terry against Rangers, despite the England captain having suffered a broken toe just a few days earlier.

The list could continue, but the point has been made. Players, and more recently Chelsea players specifically, are sidelined either because of poor man management or physical strain. It is important to note that Chelsea players could play well over 50 games per season. Not only are they expected to play well, they are expected to reach the latter stages of every competition they play in and most of them also have international duties. But can the coaches do anything about this? Well, they should. Note that apart from a few players who are continuously injured at Anfield, the squad is generally healthy.

It should be agreed that there is little one can do to prevent injuries like the one which ruled Paul Scholes out for a few months last year or the Petr Cech one which nearly ended his career, but when they do occur the manager has to handle the situation very carefully. And Mourinho should not blame injuries if he loses a match in the next few months. He should “not argue with the facts”, to put it in his own words.

As for Newcastle United, it may just be a case of bad luck. For instance, Joey Barton had few injury problems at Manchester City. Yet as soon as he arrives at St James' Park  he is struck by the 'curse of the metatarsal' and is out for a few months. But then the recurring injuries to Michael Owen or Kieron Dyer must raise some questions over the treatment that the players receive . . . or maybe the milk in Newcastle just doesn't have enough calcium.

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