We are a much more cohesive team with him in it Comfortable receiving the ball anywere and glides around the park
Last year we choose not to get an additional centre halve and the defence gets lots of injuries. This year we choose not to get an additional midfielder and we already have Elliot, Thiago and Keita currently unavailable. It's like the injury Gods KNOW!
Keita will miss Brentford and maybe Porto. Thiago misses those two and City,so its one week where we're picking from Fabinho,Henderson,Jones,Milner and Oxlaide Chamberlain. I don't think we should be panicking just yet.
I'm not panicking yet, but that is 5 players for 3 games, any more injuries and it will be an issue. And it is very early in the season. Hopefully just a bit of bad luck.
Listening to Klopp, it sounds like 5 players for 2 games,back up to 6 for City. And if another injury happens Tyler Morton steps in to be a back up. We're fine.
Problem is though it’s only week 5 of the season. Thiago, Ox and Naby are all injury prone, they struggle to put together 8-10 games. Henderson injury record not great either. The thing with Gini was that he was a machine who was hardly ever injured and he wasn’t replaced. I think Harvey has taken Shaqiris spot in the squad and we are looking for Jones to step into Gini’s shoes but we have a lot of injury prone players in that area and come November/December it could be a difference
Thiago isnt injury prone. He averages about 3 games less a season than Wijnaldum. He's been unlucky. If it comes to November/December and we're down to the bare bones then I'll worry. But I'm not worried now about two lads with injuries that will see them miss a week of football,probably even less for one of them. Each to their own though. Last season will have naturally made people weary about injuries but its never been anything but a tight squad under Klopp, and it will never be anything but a tight squad under Klopp.
We have played the front 4 together a number of times, wouldn't be surprised to see them before the City game.
I think its fair to say our injury count can be a little self inflicted rather than just plain bad luck. We run more and work harder than the average team etc. Its a price to pay for playing with intensity.
Looking up the history be missed 17 games through injury (not including Covid) last season. He missed 10 games in 19/20 for Bayern, 7 in 18/19 and 20 in 18/19 that’s 54 games in last 4 seasons, source here. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/thiago/verletzungen/spieler/60444/page/2
Those 17 games were the result of a horrible tackle and apart from a minor knock the season before that saw him miss one game, it was a groin injury that needed an op that kept him out. So in the two seasons before this one he's had 2 injuries,one that had nothing to do with his body. The 5 seasons before he arrived he played 40,42,32,41 and 42 games. 3 games shy of 200 appearances in 5 seasons is not the record of a bullet proof player,but it's also not the record of an injury prone player.
Correction on this though. Its about 5 and a half less games a season than Wijnaldum. Wijnaldum approximately 4100 minutes a season, Thiago 3600.