The Injury Crisis

Forest head physio Andy Balderstone - surely the worlds busiest man..

 

Although promotion rivals have decried our "excuses" of having an injury crisis that if any of them had seen the like of would see them crumble as just mere childish cry baby rants about its not fair, the current build of injuries is quite extreme in the least, which keeps Andy Balderstone and his physio team busy.

Here's a summary of names currently unavailable due to injury. Cohen, Blackstock, Wilson, Lichaj, Lansbury, Vaughan, Reid, Moussi, and Hobbs. That’s a whole defence, a whole midfield, and a handy back up striker out.

Seven of those would be definite starters in my book. Seven first teamers out… and then when you consider the cover for those is now injured it's almost bare bones. The fact that good number are also core central players, from the spine of the team, and not wingers or strikers, those regarded less as central and interchangeable, but those you need as rocks.

I would love to see any of our rivals (probably apart from QPR who you assume will have expensive strength in depth) try and cope with that. Yeah you get the slightly eccentric lunatic fringe from some of those clubs. the vocal minority on twitter who claim they'd cope, or that any of those players aren't actually key and we're just moaning for the sake of it claiming it's all a pitiful excuse.

I could try and draw up similar comparisons and see what their teams would be minus such an array of missing players, but frankly I don't have time nor the inclination to look in depth at teams I couldn't give a monkey's about roster of reserves. Needless to say, as with us they wouldn't be up to the task of deputising. It's a miracle we've managed to cope till now.

There has been online talk of this being unprecedented. That people have never seen such bad luck with injuries, and to such key players, and I am inclined to agree, and thats based on 25 years of regularly attending games.

So there is always the loan market, but we know even that has pitfalls. Chalobah for instance is a talented player but simply didn’t seem to settle here or play well, possibly for any number of reasons, settling at any new club is difficult in that regard. Into a pressure cooker atmosphere of a charge promotion cause where you have to hit the ground running makes for a hard introduction.

And for that reason had there been youngsters banging on the door for first team chances, which it appears there aren’t too many it wouldn’t perhaps be the right time for them to be introduced. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

Either way, any team with our injuries would struggle to maintain form and a good charge, so the fact we have until now speaks about the quality we have. Surely things can only get better injuries wise…