How Liverpool have avoided injury in Premier League title race

If Liverpool become Premier League champions this season, there will be no shortage of people to thank.

Head coach Arne Slot will warrant plenty of credit for the sensational job he has done since arriving from Feyenoord in the summer. Forward Mohamed Salah — who has already registered 25 goals and 17 assists in the league this term — will be rightly commended for a stellar individual campaign amid the backdrop of contract negotiations that have cast doubt over his long-term future at the club. Even Slot’s predecessor, Jürgen Klopp, will merit praise for his efforts to leave behind a squad capable of flourishing in his absence.

But those behind the scenes, too — chiefly those in the medical department — will also deserve a large share of the acclaim.

Liverpool have now emerged from their most intense spell of the season so far, with the visit of Newcastle United to Anfield this past Wednesday marking the club’s fifth game in the space of 15 days. Yet in terms of first-team absentees, only defenders Conor Bradley and Joe Gomez, plus midfielder Tyler Morton, were unavailable to feature against Newcastle United boss Eddie Howe’s side.

Considering the relentlessness of Liverpool’s schedule, their maintenance of such high availability levels is a remarkable feat. Many of Liverpool’s challengers, including second-placed Arsenal, have fared notably worse in the injury stakes. But have Slot’s side just been lucky? Or is there more to Liverpool’s impressive record?

Injury landscape can change “in blink of an eye”

At the end of February 2024, Liverpool were running on empty. Klopp’s side were without nine first-team players — including Alisson Becker, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Dominik Szoboszlai and Salah — and were forced to rely on academy products to plug the gaps.

Yet it led to one of the most memorable afternoons in the club’s history as Liverpool’s injury-ravaged squad edged big-spending Chelsea in the Carabao Cup final. At the time, Klopp described it as “the most special trophy” of his career, but the knock-on effects of such a severe injury crisis were acute, with Liverpool’s form tailing off dramatically in the final months of the season. Having been touted in some quarters as potential quadruple winners, Liverpool fell away in the title race — ultimately finishing third — as well as crashing out of both the Europa League and FA Cup at the quarter-final stage.

According to the Premier Injuries website, Liverpool lost 21 different players to injury over the course of that campaign. Only Tottenham Hotspur (22) suffered more.

“It would be helpful if we had a bit more than one player for each position,” Klopp said in a news conference in February 2024. “I cannot remember one day that was easy, with no problems at all. As long as we have 11 players, we will go for it.”

Liverpool’s absentees missed a combined 1,383 days this past season; significantly more than champions Manchester City (672) and runners-up Arsenal (898). In the latter stages of the campaign, having such a heavy injury burden visibly took a toll on Klopp’s side, with the likes of Salah and Szoboszlai struggling to recapture the form that had underpinned the early months of Liverpool’s season.

“The injury landscape can change within the blink of an eye,” Ben Dinnery, founder of Premier Injuries, told ESPN. “If there was just one magic bullet that fixed everything, then all teams would be doing that. But once you’re picking up injuries, it almost becomes a vicious circle when you’re forced to play players who aren’t 100%. It only takes a couple of injuries to see that cascading effect.”

That was in full force at Anfield this past season as, not for the first time under Klopp, injuries played a huge part in derailing what was shaping up to be a promising campaign.

Slot focuses on the small details

When Liverpool sporting director Richard Hughes began the unenviable task of searching for Klopp’s successor, Slot’s hugely impressive injury record was one of the factors that set him apart from the rest. Across his three seasons in Rotterdam, Feyenoord’s player availability levels were above 90%, with the Dutchman having introduced a number of innovations at the club to try and keep his squad in good shape.

“When Slot came in, the team weren’t used to playing three matches a week, so in preseason he arranged a lot of friendly games for the players,” said Sinclair Bishop, who covers Feyenoord extensively for ESPN Netherlands.

“Some people said it would be dangerous because it put players at risk of injury, but Slot said the games would help create a lot of energy and prepare the team for the intensity of the season, playing in Europe and the Dutch Cup as well as the Eredivisie. The squad was managed very well, and, over three seasons, they had very few injuries.

“This season, now Slot and his [backroom] team have gone, there are a lot of injuries because the philosophy is very different. Feyenoord didn’t play a lot of games in preseason and, when they did play, the team would often be changed around so players didn’t get used to playing every three days.

“Under Slot, Feyenoord were one of the fittest teams in the Netherlands and they scored a lot of goals late on in games because they were in such good shape. This season, if you compare it, they do not have the same energy to close a game out in the same way.”

Another of Slot’s most potent weapons at Feyenoord was his head of performance, Ruben Peeters. The Belgian, who holds a master’s degree in sports sciences from KU Leuven, enjoyed a six-year spell at KRC Genk before joining Feyenoord in 2021.

With Andreas Kornmayer — Liverpool’s long-time head of fitness and conditioning — having left Anfield this past summer, Slot wasted little time in installing Peeters as the club’s lead physical performance coach. A variety of new measures have been put in place at the AXA Training Centre to ensure players are kept in top condition.

A huge emphasis is placed on the “body wake-up” process, which involves early-morning yoga and hydrotherapy sessions. Players are now required to spend more time at the training centre, arriving early to eat breakfast together and spending more time in the gym following tailored individual programmes.

Slot also allows his players to stay at home the night before a home match, rather than sleeping in a hotel as they did under Klopp.

“People that have more knowledge about this than me tell me that you always sleep better in your own bed than a hotel bed,” Slot said in a news conference this past February. “And sleep is a very important part of getting the best possible performance. It’s nice for them to be at home with their families but also, in the opinion of the people that tell me these things, they are better prepared for our games.”

While only a small tweak, it seems to be having the desired effect, and it is that attention to detail that helped define Slot’s tenure in Rotterdam.

“Before Slot came in at Feyenoord, a lot of people in the Netherlands said that Feyenoord was a very big club, but they don’t work in a professional way,” Bishop said. “That changed when Slot came to Rotterdam. He focused a lot on the small details.

“He introduced the ‘Breakfast Club’ at Feyenoord where, every day, players and staff and even the Feyenoord media would come to the training ground early and complete lots of different challenges related to health and that sort of thing, but it was all done in a fun way.

“It helped with the players’ fitness, and it was something that everyone enjoyed, because players would be challenging each other in the gym or outside doing running. This season, that’s not totally gone but they don’t do it every day like they did under Slot. Quite often after training, players would like to go straight home. Under Slot, they enjoyed staying behind to carry on working on themselves.”

Slot and his staff have worked to create a similar culture at Liverpool and, so far, their approach has paid dividends on the pitch, with his team 13 points clear at the top of the Premier League table.

Players making “a lot of effort” to stay fit

Of the 24 players to have featured for Liverpool in the Premier League this season, 11 have suffered an injury that have ruled them out of at least one league match. Those absences combine to equal a total of 68 league games missed this term.

Compare that to Arsenal, who have also used 24 players in the top flight this season, and the contrast is stark, with 18 separate players combining to miss a total of 125 league games. Manchester City, meanwhile, have used 27 players, with 14 players combining to miss 112 league games.

Liverpool have also succeeded in keeping their most important players fit, with Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Ryan Gravenberch among those to have featured in every Premier League match this season — though goalkeeper Alisson and striker Diogo Jota have both been sidelined for significant spells.

“Ultimately, you want to be keeping those high-profile players fit and available,” Dinnery says. “Then when you do have injuries, you want those players who are on the fringes to come in and seamlessly transition into the team.

“I think Salah is one of those guys, alongside the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, who is almost a freak of nature in terms of availability and the ability to maintain those performance levels. Some players actually perform really well with that high load. For somebody like Salah to perform continually like he does, requires not only those post-match recovery protocols, it’s a whole lifetime in the making to optimise his body and ensure he is always ready for the next game.”

It is not just Salah, though, who deserves praise for his personal commitment to staying in pristine condition. Over the course of the season, Slot has credited several players with taking responsibility for their own fitness and diligently following their individual programmes.

“The only thing I know is that from the moment that I stepped in, these players put a lot of effort in themselves to stay fit,” the Liverpool boss said back in October. “I said it many times, our performance staff and medical staff is one of the best in the world — which is normal if you are in Liverpool because it’s one of the best clubs in the world, they should have a very good performance and medical staff, and that’s also what we have.

“But the main thing is that the players buy into it, because they have to do the work and they have to recover, they have to go into ice baths and all these things we are asking from them to be prepared in the best possible way. In the end, it’s always about the players. They have to make the effort to stay available.”

Those sentiments were echoed by the 33-year-old Van Dijk, who has played the most minutes of any player in the Premier League this term.

“At the end of the day a lot of it is your own responsibility because we have the tools in order to prepare for games, recover, but it is what you do with your free time,” he said when asked by ESPN about Liverpool’s remarkable fitness.

“What do you do at home to be ready for the next game in the next couple of days? Definitely, that is credit to the players, everyone connected to Liverpool who is helping us to be our best, but I’d rather have credit at the end of the season when there is something to celebrate. At the moment, it is just tunnel vision and get on with it and win games, and that is what we try to do.”

Heading into the final stretch of the season, Liverpool find themselves in an extraordinary position. And, if Slot’s side manage to bring more silverware to Anfield in the coming months, the squad’s impressive injury record should be regarded as one of their greatest successes.