David Bartlett

Kai Havertz is the latest player to suffer a serious hamstring injury, which Arsenal confirmed today requires surgery. Nicolas Jackson has been ruled out until April. Joe Gomez and Dominic Calvert-Lewin are also out with hamstrings, so is Gabriel Martinelli while Micky van de Ven has missed chunks of the season. The list goes on. The speed, intensity and frequency of games comes at a price. The last major piece of medical research into the increase in hamstrings covered 01/02 to 21/22, looking at 54 teams in 20 European countries. It found that the “proportion of injuries diagnosed as hamstring injuries” doubled from 12% to 24% in 20 years. Even if some other injuries may have dipped in number, the message was clear: hamstrings were being damaged more frequently. 18% were recurrences. Hamstring injuries sustained in training (like Havertz’s) rose from 6.7% to 12.5% from 14/15 to 20/21. The research, done by the distinguished Professor Jan Ekstrand of Linkoping University in Sweden and Uefa medical expert, found that “almost 50% of match hamstring injuries occurred during the last 15  minutes of each half”, inevitably as the hamstring kept being stretched. And there is more added time. Alan Shearer, on Amazon Prime co-comms, made the pertinent point during Manchester City's midweek game with Real Madrid that players were standing around in the cold, muscles stiffening, and more at risk of injury, during a lengthy VAR check (over Erling Haaland's first goal). When Jack Grealish limped off 10 minutes later with an (unspecified) injury, Shearer said, "It certainly doesn't help when you've got elite athletes that are standing around for almost four minutes, it cannot help your body." Ekstrand's report concluded that “professional players now undertake more high-intensity activities per match than they did previously and they also run faster than their predecessors. Compounding the pressure on hamstrings associated with football intensity is the increase in the total amount of international team travel and matches.” This is a point regularly mentioned by the PFA. The crowded calendar, further exacerbated this season by the Club World Cup, comes at a cost to muscles and tendons. Players are well-paid but that doesn't protect them from hamstrings. And the game is the poorer for their absence.

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