It said a lot about Manchester City’s season that Pep Guardiola brought up the topic of a young defender nobody was there for in his first press conference since signing a two-year contract extension.
Both the Blues and England hope that Max Alleyne will have a very promising career, yet it shows what an early stage he is at that the defender was not turned to by Guardiola in an injury crisis. Jahmai Simpson-Pusey, six months younger than Alleyne, got the nod instead and with three senior centre-backs in training again it is unlikely that Alleyne’s name will be a strong topic of conversation again this season.
For now, Alleyne represents the latest frustration for City – a player they have done their best to look after only to see them head off on international duty, be ‘pushed to their limits’ and return injured. And while Guardiola’s contract renewal may end up being the central theme of this season, for now injuries are.
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Issues have plagued a deliberately-small squad, leaving Guardiola short of options and competition and those who have been available pushed to their limits because they have not had the rest they could otherwise have had. With City’s relentless schedule and a squad full of internationals, it is not surprising that things have declined.
Stephen Smith is CEO of Kitman Labs, a performance intelligence company that works with partners including the Premier League and PGMOL to collect data and then work out how to manage athletes. Their work confirms that even something that may seem as minor as having three days between a game rather than four can make a big impact.
“Our analysis has shown us that repeatedly only having three days off between games has an enormous impact,” he told the Manchester Evening News. “That starts to show correlation between the number of incremental three-day rests between games and injury rates. It’s probably one of the most indicative factors of injury risks today. There’s a direct inverse relationship between the number of repeated games with less than three days between them and the injury rate regardless of team.
“One of the most important areas for any club strategically is understanding how to protect your assets. If you look at the cost profile of most professional teams, the vast majority of the money that they’re spending is going on players so having that money not being productive for you is money wasted.
“It’s one of the most strategic points for clubs to understand how they build their understanding of what athletes are doing in training and games and how they respond to that, and what are the risks and patterns leading up to specific injuries so that they can better manage that.”
This is something that is built into City’s recruitment and also their training programme to ensure that they are looking after their athletes as well as they can. There are also times when Guardiola listens to the medical instructions and decides it is worth the risk to use the player.
Those decisions are being made by employers though, and the recent international break saw Guardiola fail to hide his frustration over national teams. He began it fuming that Jack Grealish had been called up for England when he was not fit for City, and has ended it annoyed at an injury to a young player.
City’s medical staff have an excellent relationship with their counterparts at England, yet if Guardiola is bringing these issues up in press conferences he will not be alone in being annoyed. There is obvious frustration if caution and care has been applied to a player at their club, only for that plan to be disregarded when they head off to represent their country.
That seems bigger than ever this season, and not just at City. The stakes have never been bigger and the calendar has never been more congested, with the Premier League threatening to join a lawsuit against FIFA for bringing in an expanded Club World Cup that will leave just five weeks between the 2024/25 season ending and the 2025/26 calendar beginning for City and Chelsea.
Teams and leagues are investing more and more resources into looking after players, but that is in part because there are more and more games coming. With no let-up on the latter, Smith believes that improved communication and shared work are the only way that clubs are going to get through it; everyone needs to talk to each other more if they are not going to suffer collectively.
“We shouldn’t be asking Rodri or any player how many games is the right number, we need to be collecting the data and the physical toll we are exposing them to, then collecting injury and medical data and we need to have research on the number of games and minutes that somebody can play over different periods of time,” he said. “Then we can improve policy around rotation, game involvement and inform decisions around the global calendar and say you cannot put that game there because it will increase risk by x%, but today in the void of having all of that information that can be shared we cannot have those conversations.
“People like the Premier League are trying to perform research like this and have active projects, but they can’t do it by themselves. it will require involvement from everyone. If players are going to play in multiple competitions, there needs to be a joined up approach across multiple competitions and a concerted effort and way to do that.
“All of this congestion is coming from European games, international games – changes in those competitions. That is threatening the viability of other people’s products because the best players are playing in Europe and internationally and they are the ones who are breaking down and that is damaging the domestic product.
“That is why people care because they don’t want that to happen. They care about protecting the athletes.”
As City hope in the long-term for better communication to give themselves the best possible chance of managing their squad, the reality is the health of their squad needs to improve quickly if they are to get back to winning ways because the fixtures are once again coming thick and fast.
