Newcastle's injury revolution under Rafa: How United's success is linked to the treatment room
During Rafa Benitez's tenure as Newcastle United manager, the injury situation has improved markedly
ByChris WaughNUFC Writer
10:08, 5 SEP 2018UPDATED10:09, 5 SEP 2018
SPORT
Of the myriad problems Rafa Benitez inherited when he took over at Newcastle United in March 2016, the chronic injury situation was one of the most daunting.
The Spaniard had just 10 games and less than three months in which to try and save the Magpies from the drop - and, although some alterations were made in the short term to attempt to improve the injury situation, dramatic changes had to wait until the summer.
In the end, Benitez was unable to arrest United’s slide towards the Championship - something which now, looking back with hindsight, appeared almost inevitable given the fitness problems experienced at Newcastle during the 2015/16 campaign.
That season, Newcastle players lost a staggering 2,228 playing days to injury.
Collectively, the Magpies squad accumulated 48 separate injuries which resulted in them missing at least one fixture - and a worrying 29 of those were muscular or ‘soft-tissue’ problem.
Whenever a player experienced an injury that season, their average ‘return to play’ time was also high at 48 days - or month-and-a-half - too.
It was at left-back where Newcastle particularly struggled; nine separate players were utilised in that position across the course of the season due to injuries, including Moussa Sissoko.
Steve McClaren had promised during the summer of 2015 that he would solve United’s injury woes, but there did not appear to be any tangible improvement whatsoever during his tenure. In fact, the situation worsened.
But Benitez insisted he could put an end to Newcastle’s long-term injury woes - and the difference between the Spaniard and his predecessors, on the evidence accrued to far, suggests there has been a vast and discernible improvement in the situation.
Here, NUFC Writer Chris Waugh looks into how Benitez has brought about these changes...
The stats tell the story
Ben Dinnery, founder of premierinjuries.com, records injury information for all top-flights sides, working with the medical departments at the 20 clubs in order to compile comprehensive data.
He has monitored a rapid improvement in Newcastle’s injury situation from 2015/16 through to 2017/18; although he does not have exact data for the 2016/17 Championship campaign, the long-term trend shows Benitez has addressed this issue which has afflicted United manager after United manager.
Last term, Newcastle suffered just 29 significant injuries - defined as a player being sidelined for 10 or more days - which is the joint-lowest United have had in their last five top-flight campaigns.
The Magpies also lost just 870 playing days to injury, the fewest since Dinnery began keeping records and only the second time that figure has been below 1,700, while their average return-to-play time was 30 days - the first occasion that has been a month or less.
Perhaps most impressive, however, is the fact that just seven of the 29 injuries - or a mere 24 per cent - were soft-tissue problems.
These are the injuries which medical departments deem to be ‘avoidable’; they are caused by non-contact muscular strains, pulls and tweaks to areas such as the thigh, hamstring and calf.
Given that during United’s previous four Premier League campaigns soft-tissue problems accounted for 59 per cent, 55 per cent, 45 per cent and 60 per cent of the total number of injuries respectively, that shows how dramatic an improvement there has been under Benitez.
The figures are also skewed slightly and are perhaps even more impressive than initially they seem, given that Curtis Good’s injury picked up when playing for the Under-23s is included, despite the now-released defender getting nowhere near the first team, while Matt Ritchie’s minor calf complaint which led him to his withdrawal from a Scotland squad in October did not see the winger miss any Premier League matches as a result.
“Football is a contact sport, so injuries are unavoidable. But when you talk to backroom staff and the medical team, it’s those soft-tissue injuries that they want to be judged on,” Dinnery explains.
“Those are the types of injuries they believe can be avoided with the right preparation and with the right recovery process in place.
“Not only is there a substantial reduction in the number of days lost, but players are also returning more quickly and so Newcastle have fewer long-term, serious injuries.
“And when soft-tissue injuries only account for a quarter of your overall injuries, you realise how well Newcastle have done to maintain the welfare of their players.
“The majority of their injuries have been trauma and contact injuries - like knee, back, ankle and head problems - which are part and parcel of the game, and are almost unavoidable in many circumstances.
“When you break it down like that, you start to see that Newcastle’s record in 2017/18 when placed against previous years is really incomparable.”
So, what exactly has Benitez changed?
For a start, the training facilities have been upgraded, even if the full-scale overhaul Benitez desires is yet to take place.
The state-of-the-art 4G pitches at the training ground, which were installed during the summer of 2016, have helped lessen the physical impact on the players.
Increased massage sessions, individually-tailored gym and fitness programmes, as well as an upgrade of all equipment means that players are also conditioning themselves better.
Cristian Fernandez Martinez and Daniel Marti were also brought into the club’s medical department to work under long-serving doctor Paul Catterson as rehabilitation fitness coach and first-team physiotherapist respectively.
“Over the past few seasons, before Benitez really, Newcastle have suffered a lot of injury problems - and a large proportion of those were soft-tissue injuries,” Dinnery states.
“These additions to the club’s backroom staff have only increased the level of information Benitez and his coaches have at their disposal. As a result, injuries - in theory - should be able to be prevented more easily.
“It was like a vicious circle at Newcastle before Benitez, really. Players need to be rested, they need to recover to make sure they don’t go into the so-called ‘red zone’ where they pick up more problems - but when you’ve got more injuries, as Newcastle had until last season, managers haven’t had the luxury of resting those players, so therefore you are taking a bigger risk with those other players.
“Sometimes you don’t have enough information at your disposal either, so it is crucial to have that close relationship with your medical department.”
Rotation when necessary - but not all the time
During the Championship campaign, Benitez’s much-talked-about - and often controversial - rotation policy helped him to manage players’ fitness across the course of a 46-game season.
Sometimes the Spaniard will predetermine the vast majority of his starting XI for a game two or three weeks in advance because it will all be part of a season-long fitness plan.
There was also a significant amount of rotation during the first half of United’s 2017/18 campaign, and particularly during the hectic festive schedule.
“It’s about rest at key points across the season, managing players through a campaign and looking after their welfare, as well as their physical condition - something Rafa and his staff seem to do extremely well,” Dinnery says.
“You never hear Benitez risking players, as previous managers seemed to do, and that has reaped rewards.
“You have players coming back and they are not immediately returning to the treatment room because the injury has been properly dealt with and settled.”
In fact, Benitez has gone on record before to say he will not take unnecessary risks on the fitness of his players; if they have injuries, complaints or tiredness, he will not field them.
It is therefore no coincidence that Newcastle did not have a single squad member who suffered a recurrence of a soft-tissue problem last season; all seven were separate complaints.
This shows better management of players’ welfare, in particular that of Paul Dummett - who, although he missed 117 days while recovering from a long-term hamstring injury, did not have the repeat recurrences he has suffered from in the past.
Interestingly though, Benitez is not adverse to naming the same starting XI game after game - as long as his players receive significant rest during the interim period.
He may have gone more than 100 matches without fielding the same team at Liverpool, but while he was at Anfield his teams were playing in Europe and progressing deep into the cups, so they regularly played three times a week. The same was true in the Championship.
Yet, during the first half of 2018, Newcastle were only playing once a week the majority of the time - and, given that the team were excelling, Benitez was able to keep largely the same XI for more than two months straight.
As a result of the smart management of his players’ fitness, Newcastle players suffered an injury roughly every game-and-a-half - which is not a bad ratio at all.
Dinnery claims that medical experts stress a 72-hour rest period is the optimum timeframe for players to recover game on game.
During the festive fixture period, you always get a spike in injuries because teams can play twice within 48 hours - but, again, Benitez managed his player through this hectic phase well.
“Newcastle did not suffer a significantly-higher number of injuries during the busiest parts of the football schedule,” Dinnery explains.
“Their injuries were spread across the course of the season - and the majority of them were contact injuries, which are largely unavoidable.”
Some injuries you can’t control - but every winning squad seems to have fewer injuries
Successful teams tend to have fewer injuries - and the statistics back that up.
Players like playing in winning teams; when a side is successful, niggles can seem insignificant, while certain problems may not be raised by an individual who wants to keep his place in the starting XI.
It is therefore little surprise that when Newcastle won the Championship, or claimed five victories in eight games between February and April 2018, that the Magpies also suffered from fewer injuries than during previous campaigns when the threat of relegation lingered until the very end of the season.
“Squads who are performing better tend to have fewer injuries; there is a correlation there,” Dinnery adds.
“Leicester City had some of the fewest injuries in 2015/16 when they won the Premier League, and part of that is luck, but also part of it is a willingness and determination from the players to keep playing through slight injuries.
“Benitez has built that cohesion in his squad, and their willingness to play through injuries when they may have taken a week out or a couple of games out in the past,” Dinnery says.
“That is hard to measure with any tangible evidence, but it certainly seems to be the case that teams playing for managers they like and during a successful season have fewer injuries.”
If Newcastle are to have a successful 2018/19 campaign, then it seems the treatment room needs to remain as largely unoccupied as it was last term...
