Just as Crystal Palace thought their injury problems had eased, their luck has reverted to type.
Michael Olise, who scored twice in Saturday’s 3-1 win against Brentford, pulled up in stoppage time, winced and clutched his hamstring. The Palace manager Roy Hodgson was initially hopeful any issue would be minor, encouraged by a chat with the player as the teams left the pitch, but the prognosis does not sound quite so favourable now.
While the manager remains unclear as to the length of time the forward will be absent, Olise will definitely miss the FA Cup third round tie against Everton on Thursday.
Hodgson’s pre-match press conference ahead of the Everton game was dominated by Olise, but the manager offered an insight, too, into:
- The nature of the injury suffered
- Whether it is possible to manage a game ‘scientifically’
- How players and fans will need to understand the sports science
- How clubs in the bottom half are disadvantaged
- What Olise’s injury means for Matheus Franca
Here, The Athletic breaks down the Palace manager’s comments.
On Olise’s latest injury
Olise suffered a serious hamstring injury in June while on international duty with France at the Under-21 European Championship, a tear that required surgery and ruled him out of pre-season and the start of the Premier League campaign.
He subsequently suffered a setback in his rehabilitation but, since featuring as a second-half substitute against Everton on November 11, he has played a part in every game.
“Michael had to come off right at the end as he felt his hamstring with the last sprint he made in the game,” said Hodgson. “He won’t take part tomorrow (against Everton). We have to nurse him through and hope he comes back as quickly as possible.
“The next question will be how long is he out, but I can’t answer that one. We’re hoping this one won’t be as bad as the one that put him out for six months. We don’t think and hope it won’t be like that. This has got nothing to do with the (previous injury). It’s much lower down (his hamstring).
“It’s nowhere near where he injured himself before, so it’s not a recurrence.”
On a manager’s duty of care
With games regularly dragging into 10 minutes of stoppage time at the end, and interrupted by lengthy VAR checks, the cluttered Christmas schedule has taken its toll. The club’s sports science department will assess a player’s fitness and workload, and determine whether the data collated suggests he is at risk of suffering an injury.
“You’ve got to be more and more careful with players these days,” said Hodgson. “There are longer periods of inactivity in games, because of VAR, and longer matches.
“We’re coming off a period now where we just played three matches in a week for a couple of weeks in succession. So you are aware of all of those things. But the fact is that, unfortunately, you can’t run your team totally scientifically.
“If, for example, someone could have said to me, ‘Michael Olise might pull a muscle in the last couple of minutes of the game, maybe you should take him off earlier?’ Of course, you would do so without hesitation.
“But if, with 15 minutes to go and Olise playing like he’s playing, they suddenly put the board up (and it says) Olise off and he comes off saying, ‘What’s going on? What are you doing? Why are you taking me off? I want to play’ and the crowd is booing… Is that when the sports scientist steps across and says: ‘Well, I told him to do that. I thought it was a good idea’?”
Hodgson’s team picked up a vital victory against Brentford with Olise to the fore (Visionhaus/Getty Images)
On balancing daily demands with advice from the sports scientists
Hodgson was asked if managers are increasingly at ‘the behest’ of a club’s sports science department.
“I tell you what managers have to do: managers have to win matches. How do you do that? You get yourself a good team, you work together with everybody to try to get the best (out of them) and to make certain that, when the players are on the field, they are ready to play, they want to play and they feel fit to play. That’s what we try to do.
“Sports science has been very useful to us in terms of analysing what we do in training, the amount of running we do, the dosing of training sessions. It’s very important, making certain people are fit when they get back from injury and ready to play with all the process they go through. I can’t speak highly enough of it. It has made our life easier, our decision making better.
“But, while you bear it in mind, I find it harder to think that we are going to get to a stage where we can definitely compute how long people can play.
“We haven’t yet got to a stage where the game is completely run by people outside of my aegis where, basically speaking, I go into a game going: ‘He will play 40 minutes, he will play 70, he can play 80.’ What happens if the one playing 80 gets injured after 15 minutes with a pulled muscle?
“When you get to that stage, then the public are going to need a lot of education because, otherwise, they’re not going to really understand why players they really want to see play are being replaced by a player who, in their eyes, is a much lesser player and the player coming off is waving his arms in protest.”
Olise was a scorer in Palace’s 2-1 defeat at Chelsea last week (Clive Rose/Getty Images)
On the issues for clubs outside the Premier League’s elite
Hodgson was at pains to stress he was not criticising Palace’s sports science department. Rather, he was pointing out the issues that might affect clubs with thinner first-team squads, as opposed to the Premier League’s heavyweights who, with five substitutes permitted each match, can chop and change like-for-like more readily.
“I’m not slamming sports science,” he said. “I’m explaining a situation and how at this moment in time, at our club anyway.
“It might be different at the top teams if the player you take off is replaced by another £40million, £50m or £60m star. … It’s going to be harder for the lesser clubs, the ones in the bottom half, to do it than the ones in the top half. They were telling me the Chelsea bench (had cost) two or three times more in terms of transfer value than our whole team, so maybe they can do it and take a £70m player off and put an £80m on and no one would bat an eyelid.
“But if I take Olise off in particular and put someone on that people don’t regard as being anywhere near the same level as Olise, I don’t think the crowd or press are going to understand it. They’ll understand it even less if we lose. Everyone is going to say ‘What the hell’s going on?’, especially if he comes off protesting.”
On where Olise’s injury leaves Matheus Franca
Franca was bought from Flamengo last summer but, having arrived with a back issue, has yet to make a start for Palace. Now opportunity beckons.
“He’s very bright,” added Hodgson. “He came in injured with a stress fracture, so he was in the hands of the medical department and sports science people for the first two months of the time he was here, and was released to us in small batches to do small things. It’s maybe the last two months where we’ve had him every day and he’s been fit to play.
“That’s two months I have had to work with him, see him and realise what a talented player (sporting director) Doug Freedman has found.
Franca’s latest cameo was in the win against Brentford (Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images)
“We’re going to see plenty of him. The fans and the club will like him and appreciate his play. Doug told me about this signing and his decision to bring him to the club was made before they asked me to come back — (Freedman) said he’d need a bit of time to adjust, acclimatise and that’s been the case. But he has adjusted and acclimatised.
“Now we have to give him his opportunity and see what he can do.”
(Top photo: Sebastian Frej/MB Media/Getty Images)
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