Liverpool staff BLAMED Jurgen Klopp for club's mounting injury crisis

Liverpool’s injury troubles over the past couple of seasons have been well documented. 

According to data released by the BBC, Liverpool suffered 1383 “days lost to injury” across the 2023-24 Premier League season. 

That compares unfavourably to Manchester City, who lost 672 days to injury and title rivals Arsenal, who lost 898.

Furthermore the Reds suffered 35 “time loss” injuries across the campaign in contrast to City’s 26 and Arsenal’s total of 23. 

Over the course of the campaign Liverpool lost top performers like Alisson Becker, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Joel Matip, Ibrahima Konate, Andy Robertson, Curtis Jones, Dominik Szoboszlai, Diogo Jota, Mohamed Salah to various injuries. 

In the case of Alexander-Arnold, Szoboszlai and Salah, meanwhile, problems were compounded due to the players getting re-injured upon their initial comebacks after time out. 

Thiago Alcantara and Stefan Bajcetic lost practically the whole season. 

The problems in 2022-23 were just as stark. 

Konate, Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez, Arthur, Jones, Thiago, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Naby Keita, Luis Diaz, Jota, Roberto Firmino and Darwin all had significant spells on the sidelines. 

Liverpool just couldn’t keep up amid the mounting injury trouble, finishing fifth and outside the Champions League places. 

And a new report suggests that the finger of blame for much of the club’s injury trouble was pointed firmly in the direction of Jurgen Klopp. 

Duncan Castles, on the Transfers Podcast, this week revealed that there was a considerable amount of upset backstage at Liverpool as Klopp jettisoned a previously-implemented system for injury avoidance. 

“One of the things that happened under Jurgen Klopp in his second-last season, which was the season of multiple injuries, was that Klopp stopped using an AI-led analysis of players physical output on the field and in training, which was designed to flag up whether players were likely to get injured or not,” the journalist said. 

“And I understand that caused a fair amount of discontent within the backroom staff at Liverpool because they felt the system would be working well and it got overridden by Klopp.”

Klopp has now departed Anfield along with Andreas Kornmayer - Head of Fitness and Conditioning - and Andreas Schlumberger - Head of Recovery and Performance. 

The Reds are looking to move in a different direction in the post-Klopp era, with a degree of the manager’s powers being rolled back as Arne Slot takes up a role as head coach.  

“So this is an opportunity, bringing a coach in - who they have specifically targeted to fit the way they want to work for them - to do something different but also a big test of whether handing everything over to the scientists works or not,” Castles said.