Eric Dier has blasted the English football chiefs for the crammed schedule and has accused them of not caring about the welfare of the players.
Since the league was suspended for three months last season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a near-unprecedented level of fixture congestion at the start of this season for many clubs around Europe.
The international calendar has made the situation even worse, with the players not just having to play Nations League matches, Euro and World Cup qualifiers, but also international friendlies.
With players having little time to recover between matches on the back of a shortened pre-season, there has predictably been an increase in muscle injuries at the start of this campaign.
There have been 103 muscle injuries in the current top-flight campaign to date – an increase of 16 per cent from last season.
Tottenham have managed to come out of the crammed schedule relatively unscathed compared to some of their rivals but Dier admitted that it was difficult to watch his England teammate Joe Gomez go down injured last week.
The Spurs defender told The Daily Star: “I’ve watched a team-mate of mine three days ago injure himself – by himself – in training. It was terrible.
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“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.
“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.
“If you look across every other league, they look after clubs. I don’t understand why we don’t in England.”
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