Are Leicester repeating history after 3-1 loss to Arsenal?

Leicester’s training ground woes?

Unprecedented has been thrown around so much in the last twelve months that most things seem just precedented. Perhaps owing to their status, or the Othellian fall of former media darling Jurgen Klopp, news coverage of Liverpool’s injury crisis has been as persistent as BT Sport’s unfaltering commitment to Steve McManaman. Coverage of Leicester City’s injuries has been restricted to the club’s press releases and fans on social media. If anything in the post-Trump and COVID-19 world could be considered unprecedented, it is the injury crisis facing Leicester and last year’s champions.

Barnes, Evans and now reportedly Jamie Vardy picked up injuries against Arsenal; Leicester’s woes are mounting. At what quantity of missing stars does a trend become endemic? In trying to isolate a fundamental reason behind The Foxes injuries this season – that now exceeds 25 – fingers can be pointed in various directions. Is it down to a lack of authentic rest over summer? Or the density of fixtures over a tightly-condensed season?

Leicester and Liverpool have received the brunt of injury misfortune. A commonality is moving to new training facilities, with Liverpool’s move to the AXA Training Centre and Leicester to Seagrave Training Centre. A common thread in sports physiotherapy research is exploring the effects natural and synthetic turf can have on injury occurrence in athletes. One such paper offers a potentially relevant point.

"Rapid changes between playing on different surface types may act as a precursor to injury in soccer… it appears that players who change frequently from playing on one surface to another may be at a greater risk of injury. Sean Williams, Patria A. Hume and Stephen Kara in A Review of Football Injuries on Third and Fourth Generation Artificial Turfs Compared with Natural Turf."

This is entirely speculative, and the training ground connection could be entirely circumstantial. However, further food for thought is Leicester City’s dismissal of Dave Rennie in September. Rennie was a long-serving medical staff member and wrote a doctoral thesis entitled ‘Can The Natural Turf Pitch Affect Injury Risk And Performance Within Elite Football?’. The former physio was active on Twitter in the wake of Leicester’s defeat, referring to injuries as being “multi-factorial”.