Injuries cost Premier League clubs £90MILLION in the first half of the season

Injuries cost Premier League clubs almost £90million in the first half of this season, according to a new study.

The Men’s European Football Injury Index, published by international insurance broker Howden, calculated the cost of injuries to clubs across Europe’s big five leagues by multiplying the cost per day of a player based on their salary by the number of days they were unavailable due to injury.

It found the cost of injuries to English top-flight clubs was £89.82m, the highest figure for any of the big five leagues.

The Premier League also saw the highest number of injuries across all leagues (659) according to the Index, but the club with the highest injury costs in Europe were Spanish giants Real Madrid on €19.52m (£16.2m).

The current Spanish champions were ahead of Paris Saint-Germain (€16.79m, £13.96m) and Chelsea who topped the bill in England with costs of €16.40m (£13.63m).

Part of Madrid’s bill will include Gareth Bale, who has missed much of the first season in relation to injuries relating to his knee, calf, back and picking up coronavirus inside four months.

Real Madrid have faced the highest expenses across Europe’s top five leagues, including big earner Gareth Bale missing four months of the campaign

In Europe, the club with the most injuries was Bayern Munich in Germany with 60, followed by Chelsea on 55 and Juventus on 54. 

Injuries in the first half of the 2021-22 season cost Ligue 1 clubs €32.4m (£26.93m) – though 52 per cent of that was paid by just one club – Paris Saint-Germain; while the average amount spent on injuries by Ligue 1 was a modest €1.62m (£1.35m) per club, PSG spent more than 10 times that amount. 

September was the first full month of play for the EPL and saw the highest number of injuries, with clubs reporting 127 non-Covid-19 absences. It was also the most expensive month in terms of injury cost, with clubs across the EPL paying out £20.41m (€23.89m).

Paris Saint-Germain collected more than half of Ligue 1’s injury bill for the season so far

No side across the top five leagues has picked up more than Bayern Munich’s 60 injuries

This is more than double what clubs spent during the first full month of play in the 2020-21 season – £10.17m (€11.90m).

So far in the 2021-22 season, LaLiga has suffered the most amount of positive Covid-19 tests with 134, compared to just 66 in the same period last season 

Covid-related absence cost clubs across Europe €38.47m (just under £31million). The study found the five leagues reported 256 Covid-19 absences in December and a further 140 in January as the highly transmissible Omicron variant spread around the world.

The cost to clubs for the first half of this season was less than €10m short of the figure for the whole of last season – €48.25m (£40.11m) – and represented an average cost per club of €390,000 (just over £324,000).

Serie A saw the most soft tissue injuries, as Tammy Abraham limps off injured for Roma

Meanwhile, soft tissue injuries accounted for 38 per cent  of all absences across the five leagues. Serie A saw the highest number of this type of injury, but also the highest proportion when compared to all other absences – 49 per cent of player absence within the league was caused by soft tissue injury.

The first half of the 2021-22 season has seen fewer soft tissue injuries compared to the same period last season. Bundesliga soft tissue injuries have been on a downward trend, though still cost clubs in the league €13m (£10.81m) in the first half of the season.

A contributing factor is the difference in injuries between the two years in the month of January. In the 2020-21 season, 32 injuries were reported, compared to only two in the 2021-22 season.

This may be at least partially explained by a longer winter break this season, when the players were able to enjoy almost a full extra week of rest.