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General "Injury prone", "sicknote", "risky signing"

Berliner

Berliner

Well-known member
Given the current situation, I thought it would be interesting to analyse the players that have been signed in recent years who have come with the tag "sicknote" or "injury prone".

At the current squad I would classify these as the following:

Winnall (signed as such)
Hall (signed as such during ongoing knee treatment)
Hanson (though I would say he has become so during his time with us)
Napa (home grown though)
Atkinson (being pushed too hard too young?)

In addition, the following players are no longer at the club, but have been recruited with known injury problems or who have developed such problems during or after their time with us.

Baptiste
Hoskins
Holmes
Wroe
Thorne
Ribeiro

I'm sure I have missed others. Especially in the "what's a medical" Kelvin Thomas days...

I understand the theory, I understand the "when he's fit he's the best player in the league" comments. But is this not another indictment of our recruitment process? I know injuries are part and parcel of the game and can strike in a second (see Forde and Brannigan). But I can no longer see the point of these signings...it's like someone has read Moneyball and is trying to apply it to get players on the cheap, but all this is doing is throwing plans into chaos (especially with the squad cap) and wasting money we don't have.

Have we ever (Langan aside) had a player with an injury history that has made a lasting impression? Or any impression at all? Is it time to now say "stop"? It is for me...

Thoughts?
 
Have to be careful with using the term "injury prone" for someone who has had a serious injury that has caused them to miss a long period of football.

Will Hoskins was definitely injury prone, consistently injured with different things - Hanson, Thorne also have been in their career prior to joining us and it continued with us.
Baptiste and Napa seemingly heading that way although always bigger issues than little niggles.


On the other hand -
Obita had played the best part of 150 games over 4 seasons before suffering a serious knee injury that required 3 operations in total, hence why he ended up missing the all but 3 games of the 2017/18 season and all of the 2018/19 season.

Winnall is a different case all together. He has had 2 serious knee injuries (8 years apart) but it's only following the second one where he seems to have struggled to get up to fitness at Sheffield Wednesday. Struggling to get up to proper match fitness is different to being continually injured.
The injury proneness has almost kicked in since joining oufc - has had as many injuries in a couple of months here as he had in the entire 5 or 6 years prior.

I guess the end point is the same though - why are we happy to take risks on players who have been consistently injured during their careers (Thorne being the most recent example) or on a player who has had a big big injury and struggled to play since (Winnall)
 
captainox said:
Have to be careful with using the term "injury prone" for someone who has had a serious injury that has caused them to miss a long period of football.

Will Hoskins was definitely injury prone, consistently injured with different things - Hanson, Thorne also have been in their career prior to joining us and it continued with us.
Baptiste and Napa seemingly heading that way although always bigger issues than little niggles.


On the other hand -
Obita had played the best part of 150 games over 4 seasons before suffering a serious knee injury that required 3 operations in total, hence why he ended up missing the all but 3 games of the 2017/18 season and all of the 2018/19 season.

Winnall is a different case all together. He has had 2 serious knee injuries (8 years apart) but it's only following the second one where he seems to have struggled to get up to fitness at Sheffield Wednesday. Struggling to get up to proper match fitness is different to being continually injured.
The injury proneness has almost kicked in since joining oufc - has had as many injuries in a couple of months here as he had in the entire 5 or 6 years prior.

I guess the end point is the same though - why are we happy to take risks on players who have been consistently injured during their careers (Thorne being the most recent example) or on a player who has had a big big injury and struggled to play since (Winnall)
Click to expand...
Because they are cheap. Ultimately is what it comes down to.
 
m said:
What is our budget then, and where are we in the budget league table?
Click to expand...
I don't think anyone here really knows exactly what our budget is. It seems clear to me that we are having to duck and dive to make the most of it, as if we just signed players on the ordinary market we'd be unable to compete with the bigger teams.
 
TBH when there was no limit on how many senior players you could have, taking a punt on a relatively cheap (or even 'get paid as you play') player who had undoubted ability but a checkered injury record was - if the club could afford it - sometimes a risk worth taking. No longer is that the case.
Now with 22 (or 20) senior places available, you can't have players in there who you know before you start the season may or may not be available for selection in the majority of games.

What's worse is that some are on contracts that mean moving them out in January or even next summer is not going to be easy, as all other clubs will be looking at them and walking away for the same reasons! So you either keep them in the playing squad because you can't afford to pay them off and hope for the best, or de-register them and have a load of players bobbling about in the reserves who you can never use - expensive and disruptive, I'd have thought...
 
werthersoriginal said:
I don't think anyone here really knows exactly what our budget is. It seems clear to me that we are having to duck and dive to make the most of it, as if we just signed players on the ordinary market we'd be unable to compete with the bigger teams.
Click to expand...


Undoubtedly true before the salary cap.

But, given the extent of our losses, even after player sales, can our budget really be significantly below the salary cap?

By all means question the strategy, but can anyone provide any evidence that we are on a shoestring budget for league 1?
 
m said:
Undoubtedly true before the salary cap.

But, given the extent of our losses, even after player sales, can our budget really be significantly below the salary cap?

By all means question the strategy, but can anyone provide any evidence that we are on a shoestring budget for league 1?
Click to expand...
Yes true about the salary cap. Karl is still trying to be clever and get max value rather than sign good solid lads, though
 
Peter Leven? Allegedly should have given up playing years before he did. I suspect he did himself some damage by continuing to play but not to the extent Langy did.
I don't know where all this we've not got a competitive budget from. I've not seen any evidence either way for a while now. In the past when accounts have been perused it's been proven to be incorrect, except of course for one or two really big hitters.
Gambling on an injury prone player or two might be worth the risk but we seem to be doing it way too much. Given they take up squad places I think our approach is the wrong one. Compare and contrast their value with that of the likes of Josh Ruffels.
 
werthersoriginal said:
Basically we don’t have the money to compete with regular clubs and Karl tries to be clever. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but you’ve got a problem if a number of risky signings don’t work out.
Click to expand...
I'm not aware that has ever been the message from Tiger. All I've ever heard is that we have a competitive budget. I guess it's how you spend it. Where have you heard that we don't have the money to compete with regular clubs? What is a "regular" club?
 
Last edited:
Paul B said:
Peter Leven? Allegedly should have given up playing years before he did. I suspect he did himself some damage by continuing to play but not to the extent Langy did.
I don't know where all this we've not got a competitive budget from. I've not seen any evidence either way for a while now. In the past when accounts have been perused it's been proven to be incorrect, except of course for one or two really big hitters.
Gambling on an injury prone player or two might be worth the risk but we seem to be doing it way too much. Given they take up squad places I think our approach is the wrong one. Compare and contrast their value with that of the likes of Josh Ruffels.
Click to expand...
Each scored a goal which have to rank near the top of all goals scored by OUFC
 
arthurturner said:
I'm not aware that has ever been the message from Tiger. All I've ever heard is that we have a competitive budget. I guess it's how you spend it. Where have you heard that we don't have the money to compete with regular clubs? What is a "regular" club?
Click to expand...
Well, I have no idea, but we’re often linked with players from league one or two only to miss out on them and instead sign someone who hadn’t played for a while or from abroad. As I said, it can work brilliantly but it does imply to me we don’t have the money regular clubs like Gillingham or Bristol Rovers do
 
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