Right now Newcastle’s in jury list is well contained with only 4 players currently out injured. The last two seasons of course saw Newcastle have to deal with a massive injury list, which arguably caused the sacking of our last two managers.
West Ham top the PhysioRoom.Com Injury League Table with a massive 12 injuries.
Those out injured at Newcastle at the moment are Mark Viduka (calf), Damien Duff (ankle), Stephen Carr (hamstring) and Peter Ramage (knee).
Sam Allardyce – injury list at Newcastle looking much better
Sam talked about the injury list today:
“At the moment our injury list is good,†“Two or three injured throughout the whole of the year is a very good record. If it gets more than that, it becomes a problem.
“You’re never going to get a 100% clean sheet in the season for a squad. As long as we’re keeping it down to one or two that will be fine, especially when it comes to December and the games come fast and furious.â€
Of course, as we pointed out in the last couple of days, Viduka has been susceptible to a host of minor niggles during his career, and Sam believes one key to preventing them in future lies in educating the Australian on how to avoid them. Sam already has Michael Owen doing exercises every day to build up some of his weaknesses, and it looks like he will do the same with Mark.
Sam went on:
“We can’t do prevention until they’re cured,†“We’ll try and cure him once and for all and then pester him into doing his prevention work.â€
Damien Duff, another player with a history of injuries, has yet to play under Allardyce since injuring his ankle last season and the winger’s first-team return seems not to be in the near future as Sam continued.
“He’s still quite a way away but there’s no time limit on him,â€
“It’s just about training every day, getting stronger and stronger and more used to playing with the ball, then hopefully start joining in with the players.â€
As well as preventing injury, prolonging the career of older players was another of Allardyce’s great specialties at Bolton Wanderers, and the Dudley-born manager, now 53 years old, is confident he can do the same with 32-year-old midfielder Nicky Butt.
“It depends if Nicky wants to do it,†“We have all the tools, if he wants take them up we have all the research, all the dos and not-to-dos to help him, like we did with Gary Speed.â€
“In terms of longevity, he’s got a long way to catch up on Speedo, because he’s playing Premiership level at the age of 38, Butty’s only 32. He’s not an old man yet.â€
Sam has quite a few players in the side right now, who could benefit from Sam’s training and fitness methods. Other players that come to mind are Claudio Cacapa (31 years old), Habib Beye (just turned 30 years old) and Abdoulaye Faye (29 years old). Each one of these could easily play at Newcastle for at least the next 5 years under Big Sam. That would be good.
Comments welcome.
1 comment so far
Leo
Nov 3, 2007 at 1:42 PM
Comment #1would be good as long as they keep as good as they are at the present