I sat looking at the Premier League table on Monday morning and it really is an odd season – with teams like Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur near the bottom and others like Nottingham Forest riding high.
When you look down the league one thing that also sticks out is the sheer amount of injuries to players and the amount of youth players needing to make up the numbers on the bench.
Liverpool have really avoided that so far and I think now we are in the position of that being the only way they would miss out on the title — a series of injuries to key players in the coming weeks.
It’s really difficult to understand the reasons for all these injuries and the clubs will be spending millions on trying to figure it out.
Too much football is an easy one but I think there is probably too much training between games as it is that which causes a lot of muscle injuries. The smart coaches and managers will be simply easing players from game to game at this time of the year and I guess this is what Arne Slot is doing at Liverpool.
I only had one bad year with injuries, in 2007, which was a shoulder dislocation followed by a cruciate injury. They can happen but in my time as a player we did not see as many muscle tears and strains as we are seeing now.
The other point from the weekend I wanted to look at is the standard of goalkeeping and how this modern reliance on them, almost using them in a ‘quarterback’ role, is putting them under so much pressure that mistakes are happening. We saw that a lot in the Spurs win over United for example.
I played a lot with Fabian Barthez and he was way ahead of his time – always asking for the ball to be passed into his feet with him then starting attacks with a cute pass to the midfield or into the forwards.
Fabian would be worth over 100 million now due to those skills and he was a fantastic keeper – although in his second season at United a lot of opposition players got wise to it and it led to mistakes such as in a big game against Arsenal.
Looking ahead we have some great Champions League action coming this week and I think Real Madrid will take care of Manchester City and progress – although I think they might fall short of taking yet another title as the Kings of Europe.
It is a really open competition this year and we might see a new name on the famous trophy as the usual favourites are struggling more than usual.
Liverpool though do have a great opportunity and if they build up a big enough lead in the Premier League then they can focus on Europe more.
What Slot has done so far is extraordinary and these are the crunch weeks for the new man at Anfield. But if he pulls it off then it’s crazy to think the fans will have soon forgotten Jurgen Klopp and all he achieved.
(Former French defender Mikael Silvestre won five Premier League titles with Manchester United. He was also part of the United team that won the 2008 Champions League title)
