Ole Gunnar Solskjaer believes Manchester United’s spate of muscle injuries are related to their more intense playing style and less physical training.
United finished bottom of the Premier League table for distance covered under Jose Mourinho in his first season with 4,023.4 kilometres clocked and ended his second campaign second from bottom with 4,099.8km. United averaged 98 sprints per game this season in the league under Mourinho and that has risen to 108.6 on Solskjaer’s watch.
That high-tempo has come at a cost in recent weeks, with United forced to make five first-half substitutions in the home games against Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool due to muscle-related injuries. Anthony Martial (groin), Jesse Lingard, Ander Herrera and Juan Mata (all hamstring) are unavailable for Wednesday night’s Premier League trip to Crystal Palace, where teenage trio James Garner, Angel Gomes and Tahith Chong could make the matchday squad.
Nemanja Matic is also out with an unspecified muscle injury he sustained in training on Saturday and club captain Antonio Valencia, who has figured once in the last two months, even succumbed to a calf injury.
Solskjaer took the United players to Dubai for a five days of warm weather training in January and the outspoken periodisation coach Raymond Verheijen suggested United’s ‘sudden spike in training load increased the injury risk to players five to seven times’.
“It’s probably linked, yes,” Solskjaer acknowledged, when asked about United’s running statistics. “Because when do you make that change? Do you wait until pre-season and think you will change results by just not asking them to run? Or do we start now and show them what the demands of intensity are and how we want to play? And, of course, you have seen what I have chosen.
“We’ve not had time really to work on the fitness, it’s been more in the games, we spoke about. We had a week in Dubai, we’ve not really had many weeks of training, lots of game-time. But Dubai, as you might have noticed, it was more of a tactical one than a physical one.
“If you look at it, we’ve had five or six days between most of the games, so it’s not been the amount of games or the lack of days in between. It’s tougher now until the international break (on March 18), and we’ve got Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday, then midweek again.
“Now we will go into tough games and then it’s a tougher period physically, maybe it’s mentally, the way we prepare before training sessions. The Christmas period… you can see Manchester City have a couple of muscle injuries, it’s not just us. It’s this time of year in England, really.”
“They are getting older aren’t they,” Solskjaer joked. “Juan, Nemanja, Ander, so it’s about the preparation. The standards that you have to live up to on and off the pitch as a Man United player and as a professional player in the Premier League.
“It’s not just turning up, playing, training and then going home and doing all these little out of football activities that we have all seen too many footballers doing. I’m pleased with the way my lads have responded in that way, that we don’t see too much of them outside football, but that was a big part of my career.
“As long as you are a footballer and you play in the Premier League, make the most of it. Because suddenly you get these injuries and you are done. And that wasn’t a nice feeling, that is when I decided I wanted to stay in football and start coaching, but I tried to make the most of it by living the life as I should have been.”
Romelu Lukaku has become more of a squad member in his second season with United following a hangover from his World Cup exploits. Lukaku admitted earlier this term he put on extra muscle for international duty with Belgium but Solskjaer described the 25-year-old’s physique as ‘lean’.
“I can understand why when you go to a World Cup and you see the teams you play, it might be that his physicality took over that part of preparation,” Solskjaer opined. “We ask our forwards, strikers to work at a higher intensity, to run in behind, but that’s what he likes, so I’m sure he’ll be fine. Muscle is not so difficult to get rid of. He’s lean, but he’s muscly.”
When a reporter suggested Lukaku was built like an American football player, Solskjaer scoffed: “Nah, nah, nah. We’ll get him in the box and score us goals, that’ll be his job.”