Arsene Wenger doesn’t believe new medical innovations are helping players recover any quicker than before.
Wenger cast doubts over the effectiveness of new medical treatments, most notably cryotherapy. Cryotherapy is an extreme-cold treatment that can allegedly speed up recovery, reduce the risk of injuries and even increase energy, and is something that Arsenal have recently started using.
It’s something that could help the Gunners through a busy week where they play three games and have to travel to Belarus and back. Wenger, though, was dubious. “The players will have warm-downs, they have all that, everybody does nowadays,” Wenger said, reports the Guardian.
“Treatment with the physios, massage, cryotherapy – all the stuff where nobody knows whether it is efficient or not.
“No one knows because you have a lot of science. If you read the science, some have proved it works and some have proved it doesn’t work. The ones that prove it works are usually sponsored by the guys who say that it does.
“Is it smoke and mirrors? Yes. Because at the end of the day, since I’ve been in the job, we have improved a lot the medical treatment. A lot. But, still, if you have a muscle problem, it takes 21 days. It took 21 days 30 years ago.
“We have to respect nature and nobody could make miracles unless they doped the players sometimes. That means they inject players for a big game and the guy plays with an injury, with anti-pain.”
Arsenal have had injury problems for years and no amount of expert staff and innovative methods have helped that. If a player pulls his hamstring tonight, no amount of time in an ice box is going to enable him come back in less than three weeks. Arsenal really shouldn’t have to worry about easing their players through such a busy period.
In their infinite wisdom, TV companies have decided that Arsenal needed to play on a Monday and at noon on a Sunday, despite knowing that Arsenal would be playing in the Europa League on the Thursday.
In other countries, I’ve noticed teams in Europe play earlier before European games and later afterwards. England, though, don’t seem to care much about player fitness so long as they cram as many games on TV as possible.