DURING his first season at Manchester United, a chuckling Louis van Gaal memorably quipped: “Only one player injured… Can you believe it?”
That was halfway through the 2014-15 season, United’s last campaign devoid of European football before the current one.
Ruben Amorim does not have a single player injured. Lisandro Martinez, sidelined for nine months with an anterior cruciate ligament injury, is back in team training.
It was only two seasons ago that United recorded 66 separate cases of injury and illness under Erik ten Hag.
As early as United’s sixth game of the infamous 2023-24 season in September at Bayern Munich, ten players were out injured.
In a desperate attempt to convince naysayers he should avoid the sack, Ten Hag had United analysts tot up the number of different central defensive partnerships he had picked.
During a summit with confidants in his office at the club’s Carrington training complex, he unfurled a sheet of paper with the number: 32.
That did not excuse United’s eighth-place finish or wooden-spoon status in their Champions League group. Every United manager dating back to Sir Alex Ferguson had an injury crisis to manage.
Yet now United’s injury record is strikingly positive. This season alone, only Martinez, Noussair Mazraoui, Matheus Cunha, Mason Mount, Diogo Dalot and Harry Maguire have had injury lay-offs.
Excluding Martinez, United players have missed a meagre nine matches due to injury.
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Amorim said in his first weeks at United the players had to “run like dogs” and United are fourth in the Premier League table for pressing.
The longest spell any of those players has had on the sidelines was Mazraoui’s four-week absence. Half of that was during the October internationals.
The drastic fall in injuries at United is undoubtedly down to their lighter workload. They played 60 games last season and could have as few as 40 fixtures this season.
That said, Van Gaal’s maiden season at United consisted of 44 games and was littered with injury issues.
The influential Michael Carrick missed 20 Premier League games, star signings Angel di Maria and Radamel Falcao both spent weeks in the physio’s room and fellow recruit Daley Blind missed two months.
In a sign of things to come, Luke Shaw had six lay-offs in what was his first season at United. He played in 20 out of 44 games.
Eleven years on, Shaw has been injury-free since his return in April and he has started in all ten of United’s Premier League matches this term. As have Matthijs de Ligt, Bruno Fernandes and Bryan Mbeumo.
Fernandes has missed an extraordinary three matches in his career through injury or illness. Mbeumo started in all 38 of Brentford’s league games in 2024-25.
Shaw, 30, has been reinvented as a full-time centre back by Amorim and has less running to do than he would if he occupied the demanding role of left winger.
For the League Cup debacle at Grimsby Town, Shaw and Leny Yoro – who missed the first four months of last season – were rested entirely.
Club sources revealed Ten Hag was the first to take recovery sessions the day after games seriously and that has continued with Amorim.
Some players headed into the sauna and iced baths as soon as United returned to the club’s Carrington training base on the Sunday night that they beat Liverpool at Anfield last month.
The £50million refurbishment of the first team hub at Carrington has predictably provided United with greater facilities.
United have an entirely new recovery room with mats laid out for yoga and pilates. A high-altitude training room is one of the most noticeable investments and can be used by multiple players so no one is isolated.
Time-served staff at Carrington have been wowed by the technology, which United believe is more advanced than the majority of Premier League clubs.
The previous saunas and steam rooms, deemed too small, have been remodelled.
A brand new basement was dug into the building to accommodate the new steam and sauna, cold and hot plunge pools, and the hydroworks.
The hydroworks can be raised to ground level for players during their rehabilitation from a serious injury.
A player can walk onto it before they are lowered to a specific height and body weight for them to run on a treadmill under water. Their movements are monitored on screens on the nearby wall.
United’s medical department has changed markedly since long-time doctor Steve McNally left the club in 2023.
There was a major overhaul after the 66 injury and illness cases in 2023-24. Former first team physio Richard Merron left after 23 years in the first round of redundancies under Ineos before the start of last season.
Ten Hag, crucially, did not bring his own fitness coach with him to United whereas Amorim did in Paulo Barreira.
Barreira, who previously worked at Liverpool and Arsenal, was a student at Liverpool John Moores University, where he obtained a PhD with a thesis on hamstring injury prevention.
The outgoing head of sports medicine, Gary O’Driscoll, also coaxed highly regarded physio Jordan Reeves to follow him from Arsenal last year.
United have learnt from their mistakes. Ten Hag took risks that resulted in returning players either aggravating an injury or suffering a new injury altogether.
Some United players felt Ten Hag’s sessions were too intense and contributed to the hefty injury toll. Amorim organises midweek sessions that range from ‘game loads’ to ‘recovery days’.
Mount, once a perma-crock, is handled with kid gloves and deliberately held back after the slightest setback.
Maguire has had several significant spells out of the squad through injury in the past two years and is treated similarly.
United can afford to, with such a large squad for Amorim to pick from every week.
Unlike Van Gaal.
