So his injuries aren't real? You must be having a field day in the Delph/James threads.
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davek
Player Valuation: £150m
There's no way that feller should have passed a rigorous medical.
Did he even do one? Iwobi was signed without doing one.
Brands has decimated this club.
billyblue80
Player Valuation: £70m
Tight quad, weird he can't even sit on a bench
BlueStevie35
Player Valuation: £70m
He had played 33 games for Mainz and 3 in the AFCON for the Ivory Coast the season before he signed so passing a medical wouldn’t have been an issue
It's like it's been a subliminal message, his name has been mentioned that much and pics have been put up of some random person and then bam, embedded into our deep subconscious.
Martin Alvito
Player Valuation: £50m
I have no idea whether there was a medical or not. I imagine that he had one, and passed it. Injuries happen, and they're weird.
Back when I was wrestling 103, I had five hundred pounds of heavyweight wrestler land squarely on my right knee during a practice. The wrestling room stopped dead. Everyone in the room was sure my knee was done. It was written all over their faces.
The knee was fine. I never missed a match due to injury in eleven years, which is not something most wrestlers can say. Eleven of our thirteen varsity wrestlers missed at least one match for that reason that season. Our starting heavyweight missed everything from the second match on, after doing for his knee.
Two years later, I ran cross-country in the fall to get into shape for wrestling season, sustained a stress fracture in said right knee, and went into wrestling season in the worst shape I'd ever been in. I'd been doing roadwork for years and years. There was no good reason for the injury, but it happened anyway.
If you're asking for injuries to make sense, stop. They don't.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Doesn't mean a thing. The last game he played at AFCON that year he could have picked up an achilles injury.
Before he reached this club he had a long history of thigh strains, hamstring pulls, ankle and knee injuries...when he was in his early 20s!
Simon Buttle
Player Valuation: £50m
Well there is, It's because you were mixing up the cross country and road work. Too much road work is bad as it causes impact injuries and the uneven surface of cross country can cause all sorts of twisting and turning pulls and tweaks (some that you won't even feel) Your knees are a weight bearing joint and one of the most important in your body, too much and it will cause wear and tear sadly.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
That's just a black swan moment you describe. Most other people are like the other wrestlers: they play sports and they get injured and it shows up immediately. Gbamin (as I oultined above) had a record of muscle and joint injuries. It was there in his profile.
No way has there been a rigorous medical for Gbamin. Brands was desperate to get a Gueye replacement in. Corners must have been cut.
Martin Alvito
Player Valuation: £50m
The rest of the team was also running cross-country and doing roadwork. More than me, in some cases. They didn't get stress fractures.
I do know all about the wear and tear problem. The knees were going by age fourteen. Wrestling is very hard on knees, and my family's knees suck. My father and my uncle both did for one of theirs. The ligaments are fine in my case, but there's not much cartilage left. I can still hike long distances, but roadwork isn't an option any more. It hurts way too much.
The theory is that the stress fracture was a compensation injury. The knees were toast, so I was probably leaning back too far as I ran to alleviate the pressure, which ultimately resulted in some jerk with a burning matchstick jamming the thing into the back of my knee at seemingly random intervals for months on end. I couldn't see him, but he and his matchstick were definitely there.
Then I went and wrestled all season on the thing, which meant it took another year for it to finally heal entirely. It was my senior season, so I wasn't about to sit that one out.
I have a lot of black swan moments. I seem to be at the center of some bizarre fate nexus, which I suppose beats the tiny thundercloud.
I don't recall Gbamin having an injury record that stood out. He had a few short-term ones young, and old Gbamin was probably going to be more Iniesta than Cal Ripken, Jr. as a result, but I didn't see anything in the data series that gave me pause.
The "no medical" thesis is interesting. It could be that we have a lot of injuries because the durable players sign for clubs like United, and we get the guys that are talented but can't pass a good medical. I tend to think that the problem is that we're always on a thin squad and we flog the horses too hard, which then perpetuates the problem. Keane seems to be hard to break. The rest, not so much.
Simon Buttle
Player Valuation: £50m
Wrestling will wear down your knees though. My background is Judo/Catch Wrestling/ and Jiu Jitsu so I understand exactly where you are coming from. I'm unable to do much Judo these days as my knees are totally gone from the twisting and turning, the whole biomechanics of body movement is what led me down the path of sports science tbh. If (as you mention) you have family history of poor knees it could be a hereditary thing, we know due to research in recent years that variated collagen levels in the human body can make certain athletes more injury prone. Really don't like the sound of that thing with the matchstick, I hope it was'nt to traumatic.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Not in this case. He broke down almost immediately on arrival.
IMO there is no way due dilligence was done on Gbamin. It's incredible to me that Brands had tracked him for years and must have known of early injury concerns and yet still threw a kings ransom at securing him for Everton.
He should be sacked just for Gbamin's non-career here.
Martin Alvito
Player Valuation: £50m
Indeed. It is most assuredly a hereditary thing. My knees, the nearsightedness and the ear that only half works are the only things physically wrong with me that I know about. Pretty good deal, if you ask me. Most athletes I know seem to accumulate a lot more damage.
The matchstick wasn't traumatic. It just hurt. I have no idea how Tiger Woods won a U.S. Open with that injury, though it was his left knee. The pain was incredibly distracting. There's no way I could have swung a golf club well, much less for 91 holes, knowing that the guy with the matchstick would turn up mid-swing. That win was a superhuman feat of mental fortitude.
Having had the weird injuries and non-injuries, I'm not sure that I see it that way. Your way has the advantage of being a much cleaner story. I've learned that life is seriously weird, though.
I'll agree that if Brands should be sacked, it should be for that summer. That summer, coupled with Walsh's atrocious summer frittering away the Lukaku money, is why the squad is thin. The good news is that we should be able to fix that next summer, provided that Bramley-Moore Dock doesn't leave the club tapped.
Whether or not we want Brands doing the fixing is an excellent question. Benitez seems to have an eye for bargain talent that will work for him. It's probably why he's the manager right now.
You are right. Never play him again. A win win. No injuries and nobody will see how crap he is. The 2 games he played he was absolutely awful. That shouldn't happen again!
I love the hyperbolic sentiment. The point is, considering his injury record, if he's felt a twinge or something they need to be overly cautious until match fit.
Why risk another set back unnecessarily? As others have said, we'll probably see him play against QPR when the pace of the game will likely to be lower.
He'll get back to match fitness, but rushing him would be foolhardy.
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