Sky Sports pundit David Prutton has been left scratching his head at the “bizarre” Leeds United injury list and questioned whether Marcelo Bielsa had ever experienced this before in his career.
The Yorkshire giants have been crippled by a series of serious injuries to key men in recent months and the treatment room was supplemented this week by senior pair Liam Cooper and Stuart Dallas.
Former Leeds midfielder Prutton believes Bielsa is not to blame for the injury crisis despite having a reputation for intense training methods.
“The Leeds United injury situation is ridiculous. Time will tell if they can cope with it – but it’s just bizarre,” Prutton told the Yorkshire Evening Post.
“We have looked at how hard head coach Marcelo Bielsa was training the squad and if that would take its toll, but these types of injuries can’t all be on the back of the training. I’m at a loss for words with it all.
“You see Cooper coming off and you are thinking ‘that doesn’t look too clever’, but then you get something you weren’t even thinking with Stuart Dallas fracturing his foot. I just wonder if even Bielsa has ever come across this in his career and it will certainly be a test for him because it is so out of the blue.”
OPINION
Bad luck? Misfortune? Nothing he can do? Come on. Prutton and other pundits who put crippling injury lists down to Lady Luck shrugging her shoulders and turning the other way need to wise up. Of course, the Leeds injuries are down to the methods of Bielsa and the demands he makes of his players, in training and matches, just as Rob Holding’s ACL injury this week was due to Unai Emery selecting him in the Arsenal starting XI three times in six days. Players are not machines. They cannot be switched on and off, and expected to perform at maximum intensity. Muscles are pulled and bones fractured when players are over-worked and over-used. When bodies and minds are fatigued, the brain and nervous system operates a split-second slower than normal, and that is when calamity happens. Cooper can perhaps consider himself fortunate his injury is not as serious as Holding’s or the knee injuries of teammates Patrick Bamford, Izzy Brown, Luke Ayling and Gaetano Berardi. But the issue itself is not due to ill luck.