Liverpool were crying out for their injury luck to change after 22 players were sidelined last season, and in Arne Slot and Ruben Peeters the club have made significant strides that are underpinning their title bid.
Football narratives can change in the blink of an eye. Or a twist of a Dan Burn neck.
Not long ago, a prominent talking point about Slot’s Liverpool was how well-conditioned a squad without great depth was, being able to manage a draining season and compete for trophies on multiple fronts.
Cruise control had already been put into gear in the league and the inaugural 36-team Champions League group had been topped.
Yet after the penalty shoot-out defeat to PSG in Europe and that deflating Wembley performance against Newcastle, the perception quickly flipped.
Now, conversations abound about how tired Liverpool’s players look and the desperate need for Slot to put more faith in the likes of Wataru Endo, Harvey Elliott and Federico Chiesa.
The squad has transformed from The Avengers to The Dad’s Army.
Liverpool’s new fitness department
The concerns are justifiable. The players did look tired against Newcastle and greater rotation is needed. The lack of certainty over the future of key individuals doesn’t help with the negative impulses.
However, this is also a good moment to remind fans of how Slot and his coaches have – until this dip – enabled the squad to physically outshine and outlast all others.
Lest we forget, at the time of writing, Liverpool are still 12 points clear at the top of the Premier League, often held up as the most challenging title to win – emotionally, technically and physically.
There has been a common argument that if it weren’t for unfortunate injuries, Arsenal would be offering more of a challenge.
Yet, as Slot correctly pointed out to a journalist recently, it is not simply luck that has enabled Liverpool to avoid a significant injury crisis, despite intense spells such as having five games in 15 days.
It is in large part because of the hard work and investment into maintaining an innovative squad fitness regime, and the trust Slot puts in his coaches to execute it.
No individual earns more of Slot’s faith than lead physical performance coach Peeters.
The Belgian arrived at Anfield with Slot after a spell as head of performance at Feyenoord, where he had played a vital role in creating the efficient winning machine that over three seasons lifted the Eredivisie and Dutch Cup and reached the Europa Conference League Final.
Before starting in Rotterdam in 2021, he’d worked six years at Genk as a physical coach, aiding them to a domestic title in 2019 and the Belgian Cup in 2021.
The fact Slot created this specific role for Peeters – as part of a complete overhaul of the fitness and conditioning department – speaks volumes. Indeed, it is reported that one of the major appeals of hiring Slot last summer was not just his playing style and player development but his previous squad’s injury records.
For example, across his three years at Feyenoord, the team’s reported availability levels were above 90 percent. Integral to this was Slot’s trust in the expertise of Peeters, whose work was transformative in supporting player fitness, stating himself that his job is to “decrease risk of injury and create extreme player fitness.”
The 32-year-old is a specialist in a concept known as periodisation, which is aimed at understanding in detail how much physical strain to put on each player throughout a season, without overloading them.
Sitting within a larger department headed by director of medicine Jonathan Power, he is responsible for mapping out training plans and individual timetables for every player to ensure they are getting the ideal amount of rest, recovery and physical exertion.
His method – as was done in the Netherlands – is to provide a recommendation to Slot every morning on the length and intensity of the day’s training sessions, based on detailed player briefings.
It surely has to be considered a factor as to why the likes of Virgil van Dijk and Mo Salah have been able to start every Premier League game, despite being 33 and 32 respectively.
A lot of the success of Slot’s former Mexican striker, Santiago Gimenez, was also said to be due to how he was carefully monitored and given enough time after signing to build up his fitness and sharpness.
Controlling the controllables
This is part of several wider changes in the approach to fitness at the club’s AXA Training Centre.
These include wellness checks being undertaken every morning, ‘body wake-up’ sessions involving yoga or hydrotherapy, increased gym work and generally more time focused on the individual programmes set out by the Peeters and the performance and medical team, with Slot giving them the freedom to implement such adaptations.
Although as head coach he will have the final say, the Dutchman is a leader who leaves his ego at the door and understands his limitations, imbuing a sense of togetherness and confidence across the coaching department.
In both his spells with Feyenoord and AZ Alkmaar, Slot also preferred longer but less intense training sessions, felt it important to provide extra days off when necessary and always listened to his medical team’s advice on player recoveries from injury, rather than trying to force them back too quickly.
This is said to have continued with Liverpool.
And when it comes to his brief time with AZ, it is easily forgotten that they were in the mix for famously winning only their third-ever Eredivisie title in 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic caused the league to be cancelled, with AZ level on points with Ajax.
In that campaign, Slot stuck to the same core group, with only 17 players getting into double-figures for league appearances, with many from the academy.
The effective management of player load outside of games was a key part of Slot’s attitude of focusing on what he and his team could control.
By the time he left the following December, Slot’s record of points per game was the best in AZ’s history.
An obvious improvement
It may not feel like it right now but Liverpool have been far more physically robust this season.
Naturally, there have been injuries at different times to the likes of Ibrahima Konate, Diogo Jota, Alisson and Conor Bradley.
But these have been more spread out rather than condensed, such as in February 2024 when seven absent first-team players forced Jurgen Klopp to field a young side to win that season’s Carabao Cup.
Last campaign, Liverpool players missed a total of 362 games across all competitions, as per This Is Anfield’s data. At the time of writing, with just nine matches left, the total for this season is 128.
In the Premier League alone, the Athletic have released data showing Liverpool have the joint-seventh fewest injuries leading to one-plus games missed (19) and the fourth-fewest days lost (608).
For context, Arsenal stand at 25 and 885 respectively.
Some of it is fortune. Some of it could be because of Slot’s more measured style of play, with calculated not consistent pressing and intensity. Nonetheless, an enormous part is the work being done by the medical team.
“That we don’t have many injuries, I don’t see that as luck,” Slot told reporters in March. “I see this as, first of all, top professionals, our players do everything to stay fit. Second of all, great facilities and great staff.”
The Liverpool coach is feeling the heat right now for using the same players but perhaps there should be an appreciation of why he has been able to do so in the first place.
This physical durability surely has to be factored in when assessing how the team will fare over what remains of the season.
Yes, the battery is currently looking drained and now in need of re-charging, but the generator was running at a level of intensity for seven months that few in Europe could match.
And you can be confident that Slot and Peeters – just like they did at Feyenoord – will not simply be praying their players avoid physical issues but dedicating more time and effort into helping them be at their physical and emotional peak for the season run-in.
In football, fans can only make judgements on what they view on the pitch or hear in the news. Yet sometimes, it’s important to place faith in what we can’t see – the behind-the-scenes work, the carefully maintained engine beneath the bonnet that ultimately keeps the car moving forward on the road to hopeful success.
Based on what he has already achieved in his short Liverpool career to date, Slot and his team have surely earned that trust.
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