Tottenham Hotspur and England star Eric Dier has hit out at English football's top bosses for the way the intensive fixture schedule this season is resulting in more injuries occurring.
Dier has launched this scathing attack just days after witnessing England team-mate and Liverpool defender Joe Gomez suffer a serious knee injury in training ahead of England's 3-0 win over the Republic of Ireland on Thursday evening.
Gomez went down injured without anybody else being involved, resulting in the Liverpool man now facing the prospect of not playing again this season.
Following that incident, which will have been met with no shortage of frustration by Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, who is already a centre-back short following the loss of Virgil van Dijk, Dier has blasted the football authorities for the intensive fixture schedule that players at the highest level are being put through this season.
Dier, as quoted by the Daily Star, said: “I’ve watched a team-mate of mine three days ago injure himself - by himself - in training. It was terrible.
“It’s really difficult to understand. Something needs to be done around the scheduling. It’s confusing. It’s really not nice seeing people getting injured.
“Almost weekly, you are seeing multiple injuries in the Premier League. I don’t know what the stats are - but I’m sure they’re up from before because it seems like it’s constantly happening."
With the coronavirus pandemic having put the 2019/20 season on hold for the best part of three months in England earlier this year, it meant that the 2020/21 English football season was forced to start a month later than usual.
That has meant that fixtures have come thick and fast, with the Premier League's top clubs in a constant cycle of playing in the Premier League at a weekend and then in Europe in midweek, with there no longer being a two-week break between each matchday in the group stages of the Champions League and Europa League.
And with the levels of injuries increasing, as well as the severity of them, Dier is struggling to make sense of the relentless schedule that players are currently facing.
“I don’t understand why they aren’t trying to help our teams in Europe to be in a better position to perform in the Premier League - and protect the players’ welfare," added Dier.
“If you look across every other league, they look after clubs. I don’t understand why we don’t in England."
To put Dier's claims into context, Spurs have played 15 times already this season in all competitions, which is an extraordinary amount of games when you take into account the season is only just over two months old.
As well as their busy Premier League schedule, which Jose Mourinho's side have dealt with brilliantly so far, they have also taken to the field six times in the Europa League already this season, with the club having had to battle their way through three qualifying fixtures before reaching the group stages of the competition.
