Winter break looks like being too little too late for the Premier League

The physical exertions of the festive programme are bound to affect the players in end, writes Mike Davison

As players across the country flick through their social-media channels while lazing pregame in a hotel room, or on the long coach journey to the next festive fixture, they will wonder why they cannot be joining their European counterparts on the beaches and in the five-star restaurants of sun-drenched Middle Eastern holiday resorts.

It is nearly six weeks until the Premier League’s token gesture to a winter break debuts in English football. It may be a little too late to prevent a mounting injury burden, and potentially there could be an impact on England’s European Championship hopes. Despite the new sprinkling of television money, now is not necessarily a time of good cheer in Premier League football.

Games have piled up in December leading to fixture congestion. It is not a new phenomenon and in years past there have even been “back-to-back” fixtures for teams on both Christmas Day and Boxing Day. While some may say that it should be simply embraced, there is plenty of sympathy for the likes of Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp as they go hunting silverware on both domestic and European fronts.

Serious injuries or chronically fatigued players now can have significant implications for future games. The Football Research Group has shown that fixture congestion in European leagues is associated with increased muscle injuries. With less than 46 hours afforded to Manchester City and Wolves to recover from Friday’s exertions, they will be fatigued and are entering what is often referred to as the “red zone” with their respective fixtures today.

How teams have no time to recover

Fatigue after a match is complex and multifactorial and linked to dehydration, glycogen (energy) depletion, muscle damage and mental fatigue. The ability to recover is highly individual and variable. It depends on a number of factors intrinsic to the player (including age, fitness, training and previous game loads) and extrinsic, too. This means it is significant what they did in the previous match. Matches are unpredictable and might have been easy or hard depending on how much they had to do and what they had to do.

Players usually do not use their full physical capacity in matches and can pace themselves, knowing another match is coming up. It has been shown in research that jump performance can recover at 48 hours after a match, muscle soreness usually peaks at 24-48 hours and returns to normal at 48–120.

The best recovery strategy is time, but teams do not have that luxury. So, focus will be on nutrition, with energy repletion through carbohydrates, proteins for muscle damage, and hydration. Probably, they will use the “marginal gains” strategies of things such as polyphenols – cherry juice even before the first match to try to anticipate muscle damage and reduce the magnitude before it even happens, though evidence is limited.

The Football Research Group also concluded that English teams had on average 303 more days lost to injury over the season, and there was a higher incidence of severe injuries after the other European teams had their scheduled break.

It is unlikely then that the so-called mid-season player break (oddly, in round 26 of matches, with games staggered over two long weekends) in February will come soon enough to deliver respite from the treadmill of the Premier League for the players and coaches alike.

Mike Davison is a Sports Medicine Specialist at the Isokinetic Medical Group