With Liverpool ostensibly going to win the league this weekend, naturally all of the talk has been about them, the great work that Arne Slot has done, how impressive they have been. So naturally with Arsenal not playing this weekend, that’s taken a little bit of my focus today rather than the usual look at what we’re doing, who we are playing, etc. This blog will no doubt get picked up by weirdo Liverpool fans who want to make EVERYTHING about them; it’s been happening for decades whether they were relevant or not. But maybe if there are one or two sensible Liverpool fans (there are plenty out there – I’ve met them) who read this they will appreciate that it is not coming from any kind of spite or trying to asterisk their season, but merely looking at circumstances.

And those circumstances are based on injuries. Arsenal currently lead the Premier League table with by far the most injuries this season. It’s here for you to see. Nine more injuries than Man City have suffered this season and yet we’re being told that City’s collapse in going for the league is because one player isn’t in the team. Liverpool have had 14 injuries this season. That’s 13 players more that have been available for them than Arsenal.

It’s not rocket science, is it? Injuries = reduced chance of competing. And Arsenal have had the worst luck I have ever seen this season with them. It kind of feels unprecedented.

But here’s the thing – last season that was Liverpool. I wrote a piece earlier this year (sorry, don’t have time to hunt the archives as I have to start my working day shortly) because I wanted to delve in to why Liverpool fell away last season. Essentially, they fell away like they did and I remember thinking that they had a fair few injuries. Had they have had the same relatively-free injury season last season that they had this season, I think they might have been competing with Arsenal and City right until the final weeks. But they fell away like we have. The only difference this season is that BOTH Arsenal and City have fallen away. Is that because City’s inevitable dominance came to an end with that current team, with us just unfortunate enough that we caught the tail end of it last season?

Maybe. But the fact of the matter is it happened, Liverpool will win the league this weekend because they have had nobody been able to maintain consistency like they have. They, in Mo Salah, a guy who has gone supernova. Can he do it again next season? Maybe. Although I’d wager that this was his ‘season of his life’ and even if he dips even a little bit next season, then that might be five or ten goals and assists less (especially if he picks up a knock) and that might leave an opening for other clubs. I’m not saying it will be us, it might be City again (because clearly they are going to get away with the biggest level of corruption ever seen with the 115), but I do think that next season will be an interesting one because a lot of stars will need to align for Liverpool to have the same canter of a season that they’ve had this season:

  • Big injuries to rivals
  • They have relatively fewer injuries
  • Big players outperform age curve dynamics and go supernova again.

But back to my original assertion on injuries, because I wanted to delve in to it. Liverpool had their big injury season last season. I feel like it was the same as what we had this season, so I wanted to look beyond just the number of injuries – that stat can be misleading because if you lose three players for nine months each, then six players for six weeks each, it looks on that table like you’ve been worse hit. But the reality is that it’s worse to lose a lower volume of people for a longer period of time. So I started to look at number of matches in which individuals have been missing. That gives you a better indication. I’ll be honest, I can’t be arsed to do every club – I did find a list that showed the 20234/24 table of number of games and players missing to injuries and suspensions, but I can’t find it. So I’ve used TransferMarkt to take a comparison. Why am I doing this? I just want to see how injuries do indeed play a massive part in how your season unfolds.

For this comparison I’ve looked at those that I would describe as ‘first teamers’. I’m not chucking in youth team kids to make up the injury record numbers, because that would skew the reality of how badly a team is hit. I appreciate that my estimation on whether a player is a ‘first teamer’ is a little subjective – nothing I can do about that folks. Because I’m lazy, I’m also only counting the Premier League – it’s the way TransferMarkt do their ‘absences’ recording.

Right – disclaimer aside – where are we at?

In 2023/24, Liverpool had a total of 191 ‘absences’. So that’s one player, missing one game, for a suspension, injury or international duty. 37 of those were through Thiago and we know he was a crock and left the club, so that skews the numbers a bit. That season we didn’t have nearly as many absences and naturally we got closer to the Premier League. So it does show that Liverpool were hit with a load of injuries.

In 2024/25, Arsenal have had – with four games of the season remaining – 176 ‘absences’. That includes Tomiyasu’s injuries and he’s going to have the same record as Thiago, so they cancel each other out. If you include the players who won’t play for us this season as Gabriel Jesus, Kai Havertz, Jorginho (we think) and Gabriel, then you can add an additional 16 ‘absences’, which takes us up to 192.

So basically, what I’ve learned is that we’re having the same season – almost identically in volume – to what Liverpool had in 2023/24. They ended up finishing on 82 points and we’ll probably be way short of that on the early 70s. Of course in recent weeks we’ve basically given up on the league, rotated and had ‘bigger fish to fry’ in the Champions League, which I think has impacted our focus on winning games. But I think overall the likes of Gary Neville and basically every other pundit giving Liverpool no chance of winning the league, or being massive underdogs, was always going to be a bit of a misnomer. They were good last season, they had a ton of injuries, they fell away. Slot has been very clever in making sure he maintains continuity in the team and he has arrived in a season in which rivals have had injuries and loss of form. It happens.

Perhaps you could argue that the absences of players in certain positions has also had an impact (Liverpool lost Virgil Ban Dijk for two games last season to suspension, they lost Salah for six games to injury) and in that respect I think we probably have a case to argue (we lost Saka for 13 games and will have lost Gabriel for 10 games, as an analogue for the Liverpool key injuries mentioned above). We also seemed to have had a number of cluster injuries (no forwards in March, anyone?) whereas that didn’t seem to happen to Liverpool last season, so perhaps there’s a case there. But I guess my overriding feeling having spilled out 1300 words today is this:

Injuries cost you everything in a season. Don’t let any ‘pundit’ or journo tell you otherwise.

Catch you all tomorrow.