Hugo Ekitike - Welcome to LFC

[Mark79]

He's 23 and trains all week in some guise. His achilles shouldnt be rupturing on his 10th sprint.

I am 53 and play tennis involving multiple sprints all over the court and so far not done an achilles. Calves yes...

The full explanation is in the link. I didn't quote the whole thing.

You obviously have a capacity that you're accustomed to.

[labourRed]

The full explanation is in the link. I didn't quote the whole thing.

You obviously have a capacity that you're accustomed to.

I tend to agree with you, i'm not an expert in achilles injuries but i do know that Slot has tried to go longer in the season without a tailoff (as he has made mention of it several times last and this season and the data is there to back it all up) and made an absolute hames of it.

Full article below for those who can't click a link.

Hugo Ekitike didn’t tear his Achilles on a freak play.
He tore it on his 10th sprint.
29 mins into a Champions League quarter final. Chasing the game. High pressure. High intent.
That’s the detail that matters.
Because injuries like this are rarely about one action. They’re about whether the player has been prepared to repeat that action enough times.
And this is where it gets uncomfortable for a lot of people talking about “load management”.
At Frankfurt he lived in chaos:
28 sprints a game
750m high speed running
This season:
17 sprints
510m high speed
Looks like less.
Feels like less.
Safer, right?
Wrong.
Tendons don’t care about your total distance. They care about repeated exposure to force.
If you take away sprint exposure, you take away the thing that builds tolerance to sprinting.
So when the game demands it, properly demands it, not one sprint, but 8, 9, 10 in a short window, you’re rolling the dice.
This is the bit Liverpool fans need to understand right now.
When people say “we’ve lost the running” or “we’re managing loads better under Arne Slot”, they’re half right.
Control is great.
Structure is great.
But if you strip out too much chaos, too much repeated high intensity work, you can lose the ability to survive chaos when it arrives.
And football always brings chaos.
Late in games.
European nights.
Transitions.
Pressing waves.
That’s where games are decided.
And that’s where bodies get tested.
Ekitike didn’t break because he did too much.
He broke because, in that moment, he had to do something his body hadn’t been asked to repeat often enough recently.
It wasn’t the first sprint.
It was the 10th.
And that’s the question every performance staff should be asking:
Are we preparing players for the first sprint…
Or the 10th?
Because that’s the one that decides everything.


27th time a Liverpool player has been subbed off through injury this season.
13 last season
The highest number seen during a season under Klopp was 7.

All that said, there was a fair amount of player burnout under Klopp as well, that core team didn't play long at the top of their game and it certainly broke a lot of players.

It's such a complex topic, that we're never going to form a coherent solution here. Personally i just think we've had an unreal amount of bad luck this season, but it certainly hasn't been helped by Slot's approach. Football is always a sport where you can attract a lot of injuries regardless of the training and football philosophy, but this languid low-rent tiki-taka can get in the bin as far as i'm concerned.

[Doc_Piptorious]

Bayern links and World Cup hopes - a big summer for Gordon - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football...s/clyxx5j8408o

Think there is zero chance of him going to Bayern unless they plan to sell one from Olise, Diaz, Kane or Musiala (given Gordon can play in most positions across the attack).

The only other way I could see him go there would be to be squad cover in place of maybe Gnarby or to take the place of someone like Jackson who they loaned in to be cover for this season.


Do think there is potentially a very good player in Gordon but at 25 he really needs to start producing on a more regular basis than he seems to have been doing this season and last season.

Though if you offered me him on our left flank right now over Gakpo I would say yes in a heartbeat.

[labourRed]

Here's an exaggerated case in point, Ox saying how we built him up in training (but how long did that last). He's been toast for years and he's only 32ish.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99LcFY80020"]The DIFFERENCE between Liverpool and Arsenal Training... 🤯 - YouTube[/ame]

[Patricks_Berger]

Think there is zero chance of him going to Bayern unless they plan to sell one from Olise, Diaz, Kane or Musiala (given Gordon can play in most positions across the attack).

The only other way I could see him go there would be to be squad cover in place of maybe Gnarby or to take the place of someone like Jackson who they loaned in to be cover for this season.


Do think there is potentially a very good player in Gordon but at 25 he really needs to start producing on a more regular basis than he seems to have been doing this season and last season.

Though if you offered me him on our left flank right now over Gakpo I would say yes in a heartbeat.

Or because someone signs Olise. Hopefully us!

[Doc_Piptorious]

Or because someone signs Olise. Hopefully us!

Would be a dream signing if we got him. Fantastic player

Scary thing about Olise is he looks like he might even have another level to go up to.

[BG1973]

The full explanation is in the link. I didn't quote the whole thing.

You obviously have a capacity that you're accustomed to.

I buy the theory, but 10 sprints just doesn't sound like much in 31 mins.. as strikers they must do that pretty regularly, in day to day training. If it was sprint 30 late in a game I'd accept it easier..

[Mark79]

I buy the theory, but 10 sprints just doesn't sound like much in 31 mins.. as strikers they must do that pretty regularly, in day to day training. If it was sprint 30 late in a game I'd accept it easier..

If he's conditioned to 17 across a full game, then 10 in 30 mins is a massive increase.

Apparently they don't do a great deal of intensity work in training. Apparently the physical performance coach emphasises recovery between games above conditioning and training and the team does far fewer sessions than they did previously.

[Kenneth]

If he's conditioned to 17 across a full game

What madness is this? It sounds like pseudo science, or at least assigning a level of accuracy that couldn't possibly be justified. If this is the sort of bollocks we've put our faith in, it's no wonder things have gone awry.

[Doc_Piptorious]

If he's conditioned to 17 across a full game, then 10 in 30 mins is a massive increase.

Apparently they don't do a great deal of intensity work in training. Apparently the physical performance coach emphasises recovery between games above conditioning and training and the team does far fewer sessions than they did previously.

Which is just speculation. There is no proof at all that he is being conditioned to be able to do less. There are assumptions being made about it but without being privy to the day to day training programmes for each player it will remain speculation.

He also did 25 intensive sprints in the game against BHA recently. Just looked at his Frankfurt stats and the 28 sprints is not his average, it is the most he did in a single game.

The most he did in a single game last season was 28, the most he did this season in a single game is 25. So not far off.

There seems to be some confusion created by some blogs and websites reporting it as an average of 28 intensive sprints and a season high of 28 in a game.

There are also stats available online, though they were published in late Feb 2026 so a little out of date, of the average sprints per game for forwards (not wingers) in the PL. Ekitike came in 10th place but only 2 sprints per game less than the player in 1st. All of the top ten have a sprints per game average of less than 15 intensive sprints per game between August and February

[Mark79]

What madness is this? It sounds like pseudo science, or at least assigning a level of accuracy that couldn't possibly be justified. If this is the sort of bollocks we've put our faith in, it's no wonder things have gone awry.

Which is just speculation. There is no proof at all that he is being conditioned to be able to do less. There are assumptions being made about it but without being privy to the day to day training programmes for each player it will remain speculation.

He also did 25 intensive sprints in the game against BHA recently. Just looked at his Frankfurt stats and the 28 sprints is not his average, it is the most he did in a single game.

The most he did in a single game last season was 28, the most he did this season in a single game is 25. So not far off.

There seems to be some confusion created by some blogs and websites reporting it as an average of 28 intensive sprints and a season high of 28 in a game.

There are also stats available online, though they were published in late Feb 2026 so a little out of date, of the average sprints per game for forwards (not wingers) in the PL. Ekitike came in 10th place but only 2 sprints per game less than the player in 1st. All of the top ten have a sprints per game average of less than 15 intensive sprints per game between August and February

The article says he on 17 sprints a game, which I took to mean an average. If that's what he's used to doing, then suddenly doing 10 in 30 mins is a massive increase. How would that be hard to accurately account for?

Anyway, its all there in the piece.

Whatever people think about Ekitike's achilles, I think most would agree that there's definitely something way off with the squad's physical conditioning this season. It apparent in how much less running we do, the lack of intensity and how we look knacked after 60 minutes. If basic things like that are obvious, then there'll definitely be deeper issues too.