A story suggesting in part that the boots worn by players may be contributing towards the injuries suffered by Premier League players is again doing the rounds on social media following the shocking injury crisis at Upton Park.
The Mail Online published a story back in October saying that six Premier League stars who suffered devastating cruciate ligament injury blows in the last six weeks were wearing Nike boots.
The players were Danny Ings (Liverpool), Joe Gomez (Liverpool), Tim Krul (Newcastle), and Tyrone Mings, Callum Wilson and Max Gradel of Bournemouth.
A quick check on Google has shown this morning that Winston Reid – who has suffered his third ligament injury in less than a year – is also using Nike boots along with Enner Valencia, Manuel Lanzini and Dimitri Payet.
However, there is absolutely no evidence connecting the Irons injuries to the brand of boots the players wear and within the Mail story a footwear industry source said: “Injuries are part and parcel of the game and have always occurred. What brand is being used is a complete coincidence – this has nothing to do with boots!”
Injury data analyst Ben Dinnery is quoted as saying: “Nothing shouts out that this is a problem with football and certainly not Nike.
“In almost every case there has been some form of coming together with either the turf or an opponent. I know that Eddie Howe and Sean Dyche have investigated and found that the injuries were unavoidable.”
And a West Ham source, when asked by ClaretandHugh whether we should be over-worried by Winston’s injury record over the past 12 months said: “No, it really is down to bad luck.”
correlation does not equal causation…
Matthew Etherington has said
don’t get me wrong the surface was pristine but always liable for injuries. It was like literally training on a road for 2 hours every day. Eventually your muscles say enough, there come the injuries, either during training or on a match day. I was there for five seasons and every pre-season the pitches would get re-layed. Still too firm. When I went back to train last summer (2014) the training ground was still way too hard and nothing had changed. I had a muscle injury myself within a few days. At Stoke’s training ground with decent pitches (plenty of rain also!) we had minimal injuries, me and my groins/muscles injuries, in the early years at Stoke, were absolutely fine.
People will say “Premier League pitches are the same now, so get on with it”. They are not. Chadwell Heath is a lot firmer than any training ground/Premier League pitch I have played football on.
I’m sure the Chairmen, who have done such an admirable job since taking over, know this. I think we all agree it needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. Thankfully this appears to now be the case with the club moving to Rush Green on Monday as opposed to the end of the season.
You do have to question why it has taken so many injuries to make this happen however. I don’t believe the medical team are at fault either, personnel has changed a few times over several years and we still seem to get numerous injuries every season lets hope the move to Rush Green now solves the problems.
The rumours couldn’t have been started by a rival boot manufacturer by any chance, could they?