How much of Saints season was affected by injuries to key players, here we look at the percentages.

There can be no doubt that Saints season was affected by injuries to key players, indeed Saints went into the final games without 3 mainstays of the side from earlier in the season Fraser Forster, Morgan Schneiderlin and Dusan Tadic available due to injury.

That number of injuries would cause problems to most sides but that only tells a small part of the story of a season where key players were being hit with injury seemingly on a weekly basis.

Jay Rodriguez of course missed all of the season through his knee problem, but in many respects that does not count as we did not expect him to play a major part, however lets take a look at the rest of the squad.

Take away the top three players and when you realise that Morgan Schneiderlin missed 31% of the games or in other words 12 fixtures due to being injured and that is a big amount for a player who many consider the most conistent in our three seasons back in the top flight.

James Ward Prowse is also a key squad player and his 29% of games missed cannot fail to have affected us.

Likewise Fraser Forster and Toby Alderweireld were automatic choices when fit so with both missing 24% of the games that is a big number for such key players.

This meant that 8 players missed roughly a quarter of all fixtures each through injury and a further 7 players missed 10% or more of the season through injury.

That is a big amount especially when you consider that on top of that we had suspensions at key times and players like Sadio Mane and Yoshida away on International duty in January, for a club like Saints with a relatively small number of actual Premier league experienced players it highlights just how well Saints have done under difficult circumstances.

The emphasis is of course on the words key players, whilst some on this list are more squad players it cannot be good for a side when a combined total of around 100 matches were missed through injury by those considered genuine first team players.

In total injuryleague.com for whom we have to thank for the stats haave rated Saints as the 7th team in terms of number of players unavailable through injury and it could be said that matches our league position, however it would not tell the full story, as sometimes it is more about who the injured player is and the time he is injured than the number of games missed etc.

Photo: Action Images

REEDYREEDOREEDZ added 13:34 - May 28 What would be interesting is to see our win % with and without Schneiderlin, as its likely to be something we'll have to deal with next season.
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SaintBrock added 14:25 - May 28 Nick, more illuminating if you add in the stats on time missed through suspension as well? The weakness in all this is that not all players have an equal chance of playing week-in, week-out so whilst total absence is an important issue for automatic first choice players it is less so for squad rotators. Such stats refer only to availability not participation so it is unwise to draw any conclusions from them

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