Rodri needs a rest – and the Man City star isn’t the only one

Rodri needs a rest. The Man City midfielder confessed as much in the aftermath of his side’s 3-3 draw at Real Madrid in the Champions League Quarter-Final last week. But is he really the only one who does in an action-packed Premier League season?

Rodri’s Rest

No sooner had Rodri made the comments than reporters began to speculate about him being rested against Luton. Nobody was especially surprised to see him sit out that game. City did not seem to miss the Spaniard as they spent the game on the front foot and picked up a comfortable 5-1 victory.

Pep Guardiola could be said to have made a gamble in resting Rodri. The Spain international is on 63-game unbeaten run in English football. He was absent earlier in the season when Man City were knocked out of the League Cup by Newcastle and lost league games away at Wolves, Arsenal, and Aston Villa. Man City can ill-afford a loss at this stage of the season. They are in the midst of a thrilling three-way title race.

Guardiola, however, plans Manchester City’s route through competing in multiple competitions. He’s fresh from a memorable Treble-winning season where he demonstrated that only too well. I suspect the plan was always to rest Rodri this weekend. It was a calculated risk, and this weekend worked out exactly as Guardiola planned and hoped.  See all result Man City live scores.

The Wider Context

Rodri’s comments were unsurprising to anyone who has watched Premier League football this season. We’ve seen a large number of injuries across all 20 Premier League teams. Many of the non-injured players look tired. I think it’s natural that some players feel in need of a break.

The 2022 Qatar World Cup was played in the middle of last season. The 2024 European Championships will follow in the summer. This has created an environment where some of the top players will have played virtually two years of continuous football.

When this is discussed, you often hear people saying that footballers are highly-paid and should “get on with it”. But players aren’t robots, and performing at the highest level repeatedly for two years will take a toll even on the most fit of players.

Injuries

Each week when reviewing the upcoming fixtures in the Premier League I’ve really noticed how many managers are talking about difficult injury situations. Almost every club has been hit by a difficult situation during the 2023/24 season. Many managers have been remarking on this and you see it discussed by fans as well.

As of the end of February, the situation by club so far this season looked like this:

Whilst some clubs have been hit harder than others, almost every club has lost significant playing time to injury. The overall injuries are up by at least 15% on 2022/23 and that does create a cause for concern.

Who else needs a rest?

As well as lots of players getting injured, others have played a large number of minutes. These facts of course are not unrelated. Each Premier League club has a 25-man squad. When one player is injured, another must absorb some of the minutes the injured player would have played.

I took a look at the top players in terms of minutes played this season, in total in all competitions including internationals. Excluding goalkeepers, for whom the workload is different, the top 10 such players based in the Premier League are:

In many respects I’m unsurprised by some of the players shown. They are all key leaders for their teams. The Gabriel/Saliba/Rice triangle is a key part of Arsenal’s defensive structure. John McGinn has captained Aston Villa to the brink of Champions League qualification.

What really stood out for me was the two Brunos on this list.

Bruno Guimarães (Newcastle United)

Bruno Guimarães has been indispensable to Newcastle this season. The Brazilian is their star midfielder and makes their team tick.

Guimarães actually picked up 9 yellows in the first 21 domestic games of the season. He’s then remarkably gone 11 games without a booking, to avoid a suspension. That’s incredible, especially as he has remained defensively and offensively influential throughout, including scoring a match-winning goal. He has stabilised what looked a difficult season for Newcastle. They now suddenly look on track for Europa League qualification and Bruno has played a huge part in that.

Bruno Fernandes (Manchester United)

Bruno Fernandes, of Manchester United, is in contrast I think often thought of as a luxury player. I think we are often focused on his offensive contribution. I think sometimes Fernandes isn’t cast as a leader of his team in quite the same way as some of the other players in this top ten.

That is perhaps a little unfair I think, reflecting on these numbers. Fernandes has certainly been putting the hours in!

Where’s Rodri? Didn’t he need a rest?

Rodri isn’t in the top ten here. Of course a player doesn’t have to play 4,000 minutes to have value for a Premier League team. But if Rodri needs a rest, I’m sure these ten players do too. They’ve had to navigate a relentless schedule this year.

Implications

Premier League clubs are stretched by injury to an unprecedented degree this season. When tuning in to a game this season, I’ve been regularly disappointed by some of the names that have been missing.

The gap has been admirably filled, both by some exciting new young players and by the ten warriors in the chart in above. But that doesn’t mean it should be happening in the first place.

I think football authorities are currently trapped in a mode of thinking where they want more and more games to be played. FIFA promised us more football when Gianni Infantino was re-elected. But I’m not sure more is always better. I am particularly concerned about the new, expanded Champions League format next season.

Players are people too and I think they need a rest more regularly. We need a less packed schedule with more breaks and without adding more games. That in turn would allow us all to turn up at a match or tune in on the TV and consistently see the very best players playing and performing at the highest level.

There’s a lot of focus on players and how much money they earn. For me that doesn’t mean they should be run into the ground for our amusement. Some of the game’s administrators also earn a lot of money, and for me they’re justifying it a lot less at the moment than the guys I see putting their bodies on the line out on the field.