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Man U manager claims players can’t cope

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Manchester United boss Erik ten Hag has claimed players can’t deal with the overload of fixtures being heaped upon them.

It would be easy to become cynical about such a comment and it does rather smack of sour grapes with his team currently in ninth place in the Premier League.

Discussing the problem he said that with the World Cup in the middle of the season clubs had to play a longer campaign along with the FA Cup, Nations League games and a shorter summer break.

He went on to say thatĀ  the load on the players is too much. and that they can’t deal with it and that is what people are seeing in his squad at the moment.

It would be nice to knock him of course but in fact in general terms he is probably right – there is far too much football and next month we face yet anotherĀ  international break followed by the Afcon tournament.

Below we publish the figures for injuries at each club – make your own minds up:

Premier League injury table
Chelsea 10
Sheffield United 9
Crystal Palace 9
Newcastle United 9
Manchester United 8
Arsenal 8
Tottenham 8
Brentford 6
Burnley 6
Bournemouth 6
Luton 6
Aston Villa 5
Brighton 4
Everton 4
Fulham 4
Liverpool 4
Manchester City 3
Nottingham Forest 2
West Ham 1
Wolves 0
Source: Premierinjuries.com – not including suspensions or disciplinary issues

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Hugh Southon is a lifelong Iron and the founding editor of ClaretandHugh. He is a national newspaper journalist of many years experience and was Bobby Moore's 'ghost' writer during the great man's lifetime. He describes ClaretandHugh as "the Hammers daily newspaper!"

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