If you find yourself asking how much do injuries cost English clubs, then we have some good news.
Often, football fans will bemoan the cost of injuries: how might the 1998 World Cup have turned out without the Ronaldo mystery? Would Liverpool have won a Premier League title had Fernando Torres played a bit more often in 2008/09? What more might Arsenal have achieved with a fully fit Robin Van Persie for all of his eight years at the club? These 'costs' are intangible; measured only in supposedly lost medals, and disappointment.
Some fine work by Hopewiser.com, however, has put a definitive price of injuries. They have worked out what each Premier League club paid on injuries and suspensions in the 2015/16 season. It does not make pretty reading for the Manchester clubs, who forked out over £30,000,000 paying injured players during that season.
The clubs greatest burdens were Vincent Kompany and Radamel Falcao. Kompany cost City £3,240,000 in his 27 weeks out of action. Remarkably, Radamel Falcao cost United £5,035,000.
Arsenal were third on the list (£14,720,000) and Liverpool fourth (£9,115,000), with Swansea bottom, on £204,000. Perhaps instructive of why they won the title, Leicester were third from bottom, spending just £450,000.
Elsewhere, Chelsea spent the most on suspensions: (£1,894,000) with Liverpool second, spending £1,180,000. Man City and Swansea both didn't pay a cent in suspension costs.
The same study, by the way, found some serious waste in other sports: the NFL paid $5,444,872.17 to suspended players in 2015, the MLB spend £631,800 a year on baseballs, and Wimbledon's selling of used tennis balls to customers at a discounted rate costs them £379,000 a year.
