Brukner departed also

[mr_moo]

as the title says, peter brukner head of medical as departed. sorry if missed else where.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/17696038

 

[Ossi]

Wtf!? I thought he had made a good job? The summer clear out has begun.

Sign Placenta woman already.

 

[Frogfish]

Surprised. Thought he was supposed to be doing a great job. No doubt he was responsible for transfers too then.

 

[King Binny]

Posted in the Comolli thread:

Back in 2010:

Guillem Balague came out with this statement about Liverpool’s medical department:

“There is a doctor working at the club who has been allowed to make sports science a priority. Nothing wrong with that, you might think, a characteristic of many clubs in the modern age; however, this particular doctor has a level of influence over team selection unseen anywhere else.”

There have been a couple of quotes recently from Roy Hodgson that suggest there is tension between the Sports Science team and the manager over when players are available for selection. The latest comes from when Roy talked about Daniel Agger’s return today:

“Agger is much better and working very, very hard. He’s really pushing himself beyond what we could expect him to do. His attitude to getting back is first class. We’re targeting the Fulham game. The Sports Science people are telling me it’s too soon and that really he needs a bit longer, but in my conversations with him he is in agreement that Fulham isn’t out of the question so he’s pushing it.”

Brukner has overseen a complete transformation of the Medical department at Anfield with a raft of new programmes and a small army of doctors and Sports Scientists. Here is a list of medical personnel currently on the Reds payroll: Dr Peter Brukner, Zaf Iqbal, Darren Burgess, Phil Coles, Rob Price, Andrew Nealon, Matt Konopinski, Chris Morgan, Jordan Milsom, Alan McCall, Ivan Ortega, Paul Small, Sylvan Richardson, Barry Drust, James Morton and James Malone.

Liverpool stutter after doctor forces Roy Hodgson to tear up his plans

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/dec/15/liverpool-utrecht-europa-league

Hodgson's explanation contained a first – an apology for misleading the press – and made absolute sense. But it did little to dispel the suspicion that Liverpool's manager must cede authority to Dr Peter Brukner, the club's head of sports science and sports medicine, even when trying to rebuild momentum for Saturday's reunion with Fulham.

Judging from the comments from the man himself and Kenny, seems like the other staffs and the system are staying. Probably some personal against him?

 

[Insignificance]

I am surprised there is so strong opinions from people regarding a doctor.... Well, when thinking about it, the same people have shown a completely lack of football knowledge so maybe they compensate with medical knowledge 😉

 

[Hansern]

I think this has been blown out of proportion tbh. He was always going to return to Oz. Has organized and created a world class set up. And with the right people in place this will now just continue in his mould.

Rumour was Burgess to step up I think

 

[King Binny]

There are two interesting tables involving Liverpool and Manchester United at present. In one, United are in first place and Liverpool are in eighth.

In the other it is Liverpool who occupy the top spot, with Manchester United back in eighth. Unfortunately for Liverpool the first table is the Premier League one; the second has been compiled by the website physioroom.com and intriguingly shows that Liverpool have suffered the fewest number of injuries in the league, incredibly half as many as United.

Apart from two long-term knee injuries, to Lucas (what a miss he has been) and Charlie Adam, Liverpool had every first-team player available for last Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final against Everton, which is an achievement given the time of the season.

During that game, the team’s fitness levels showed as they over-ran their opponents in the second-half to turn the result around — which tallies with yet more statistics showing, on average, that Liverpool’s players sprint 14 per cent more than their rivals in games. Rather than total distance covered, this key piece of data is regarded as relevant to dictating the players’ fitness in matches.

Yet, last week, and before the Wembley match, Liverpool’s owners sacked not just the club’s director of football Damien Comolli but the head of the sports medicine and sports science department, Dr Peter Brukner, with immediate effect. If it was a surprising decision, given Liverpool’s apparently strong record on fitness, then it was also a curious one in its timing.

Why could it not wait until the end of the season, rather than right now with key games still to play and fitness, player recovery and so on such crucial issues?

Certainly Brukner’s departure has caused some astonishment at other Premier League clubs, and within the world of sports science, given the impressive levels of investment Liverpool have made and because, also, such a thorough approach would appear to be something that would appeal to the club’s owners — and the whole Moneyball psychology — in the Fenway Sports Group and John W Henry in particular.

Will Brukner’s department now be unpicked? Quite possibly so and maybe it was deemed as too expensive to run as Fenway plan a number of cut-backs. It could be a false economy. The rumour is that Liverpool are expected to turn to Dr Mark Waller, the former head of the medical department and someone who is well-known by manager Kenny Dalglish, and other clinicians might follow Brukner, an Australian, in leaving the club. Dalglish paid tribute to Brukner, a respected figure who has worked in several sports, following his departure. But what odd timing.

Clearly Henry and Tom Werner, the club’s co-owners, felt that something had to give at Liverpool with the underachievement at the club despite their vast investment in the transfer market. Comolli’s departure was a statement of intent, an abrupt attempt to shake things up, which it did, with the sense that a lot of money has been wasted.

Although Dalglish was also quick to dismiss suggestions he had any role to play in the departures, they will nevertheless increase his power at the club. He has received the owners’ backing for the time being at least and the next 12 months would appear crucial. He has to deliver.

There is only one table that matters, of course, and that is the Premier League table where Liverpool sit in eighth place and an incredible 36 points behind United. But given their strong record on player fitness, their ability to rehabilitate players quickly, then why dispense with the man who had helped place them at the top of at least one table this season?

Despite his sacking from Liverpool, Dr Peter Brukner is still expected to attend what has been billed as the world’s largest football medicine conference at Stamford Bridge this weekend and run by the Isokinetic Medical Group.

Brukner is one of the key speakers at the conference which will include 1,000 delegates and representatives from 56 countries and some of the world’s biggest clubs, who will debate, how to deal with serious knee injuries.

Sports science is becoming an increasingly important part of football, as it finally attempts to catch up with other sports, and leading Premier League doctors, including Manchester City's Dr Phil Batty as well as the FA’s Dr Ian Beasley and head of physiotherapy Gary Lewin, will take part.

 

[tombrown]

Is Kenny going to get promoted into Brukner's job?

 

[Hansern]

Wasnt Brukner supposed to leave when the set up was working perfectly? Well it is now, and the right people are in place. I think this is blown out of proportion.

 

[gkmacca]

Was he sacked 'with immediate effect'? I thought it was said he'd be leaving at the end of the season. If you just sack the man at the top of that massive sports science pyramid it either means he's completed his job or it's down to something personal. It's hardly going to save much money unless you dismantle the whole system. What Doc Waller would be doing within that system, apart from looking lost, is a mystery.

 

[spider-Neil]

I don't see what the problem is with medical staff telling the manager when to play players. how many times have players been rushed back only for them to suffer a setback? johnson at spurs srings to mind.

 

[gkmacca]

I suppose it depends on the extent to which such a specialist is erring on the side of caution. A manager has to try everything he can to field his strongest team to win matches, so a detached sports science specialist continually ruling out certain players - in an era when most players still play many games a season with various niggling minor injuries - is inevitably going to cause tensions to increase. I don't think any club has progressed so far that they truly understand what a good balance would be between the demands of sports science and the demands of a manager under huge pressure. If there's a crunch game coming up, most fans would expect a key player to play even if he has to be patched up and maybe even given an injection; the sports scientist wouldn't. That conflict will probably always be there, but it needs to be analysed more rigorously. Someone telling Rafa not to play the crocked Kewell in 2005 would have been a good idea (not that he would have changed his mind); someone doing the same about Hamman and his broken toe wouldn't have been such a good idea.

 

[King Binny]

English Premier League soccer clubs spend more on acquiring players than teams in other countries, yet trail continental rivals when it comes to looking after those expensive assets, trainers and doctors say.

“Compared to the rest, we’re probably catching up,” Dr. Peter Brukner, the Australian who oversaw 18-time champion Liverpool’s medical services, said in an interview. “Italians have always been pretty good in this area. I think the Spanish are pretty good in the way they look after their players and I think we’ve been a bit behind.”

Brukner left Liverpool last month, about two years after joining from Australia’s national soccer team. His appointment in March 2010 followed criticism of the club’s sports-medicine department by former players and ex-owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks. According to website physioroom.com, a U.K.-based aggregator of injury news, Liverpool has suffered the lowest number of injuries in the 20-team league since the start of the season.

“It’s all very well spending millions and millions of pounds on players but you have to do everything you can to ensure those players are out on the pitch rather than the medical room,” Brukner said. “It’s a simple matter of a looking after your assets.”

Managers in English soccer have a tradition of replacing backroom staff, including doctors and physiotherapists, with individuals they’ve worked with in the past, according to Mike Davison, U.K. managing director for sports medicine company Isokinetic, who’s recruited medical personnel for Champions League finalist Chelsea and advised England’s Football Association. Brukner started work about six months before current Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish.

“The quality of doctors and physiotherapists in the Premier League is as high anywhere in the world but they work in suboptimal conditions,” said Davison, who described a recent example where Aston Villa manager Alex McLeish replaced the club’s doctor Mark Waller without ever working with him and brought in a former colleague Dr. Ian McGuinness from Birmingham City, his previous club, as a replacement. Aston Villa spokesman Brian Doogan didn’t immediately return a voicemail message.

Graham Taylor, a former Villa manager and also coach of the England national team between 1990 and 1993, said managers shouldn’t be responsible for medical appointments.

“The doctor belongs to the club not the manager,” he said in an interview.

Doctors need to have “a continuity of work,” Jiri Dvorak, chief medical officer at soccer’s governing body FIFA, said in an interview. “They know the team.”

In English soccer the average tenure of a manager is 14 months, according to Davison. That often means disruption to the medical departments, something that happens less frequently overseas. Real Madrid and Juventus historically keep medical teams for between 10 and 12 years, he said.

“In that time the number of managers and presidents will have exceeded 11 or 12 in both instances,” Davison said. “Having a platform of stability is certainly important when it comes to the health of footballers.”

Sanitas, a private-medical company, started running Real’s medical team about four years ago.

Teams must “develop the highest-quality medical staff independent of the manager,” Brukner said. His departure, he said, was the club’s decision.

“I would rather not comment on the relationship with the manager,” he added when asked about Dalglish.

Still, speaking generally, he said, “If the manager doesn’t have trust and faith in the medical staff then it’s a very difficult situation.”

Gillett, Liverpool’s co-owner, had railed at the number of injuries the team was suffering. Brukner said before he got to the club it had no “gym culture” and “there wasn’t a lot of fitness work done.”

As well as having fewer injuries than their opponents, Liverpool’s players also run on average 14 percent more than their rivals each game, the Daily Telegraph said April 19. The results have come on the back of spending on staff and infrastructure that’s less than the average annual wage of a Premier League player, Brukner said.

Liverpool’s players now work on injury prevention, something that wasn’t done previously. Antonio Acedo, who worked as a physiotherapist at Real Madrid between 1981 and 2008, said “80 percent of the work” done at the Spanish club focuses on prevention. Cristiano Ronaldo, who’s scored 43 goals this season for Real, does as much as five hours a week in the weight room to help guard against injuries, Acedo said.

Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard, 31, has missed much of the last two seasons through injury, mainly to his groin. Brukner says the midfielder’s chances of extending his career have been boosted by a change to his fitness regime.

“It may come back to bite me, that statement, but he’s certainly doing everything he should to improve his chances of prolonging his career,” he said.

 

[King Binny]

TUNE IN TO INJURY CHANNEL

An interesting idea has been floated to television executives by Dr Peter Brukner, until recently the head of sports medicine and sports science at Liverpool. The Australian has put forward a proposal to front a weekly show to examine injuries suffered by Premier League players.

It would provide informed opinion on the state of Jack Wilshere's heel or Gary Cahill's hamstring and how the injuries should be treated. Brukner has put forward his plan to Sky TV executives and is awaiting a response. Such shows are not unusual in other countries and Brukner had a similar job for a while in his native Australia where he was also allowed down onto the touchline for sports such as Australian rules football to give updates and carry out interviews.

In the United States, American football matches are also monitored with data broadcast on the distance covered by players, their sprints and even their heart rates. The data can also reveal the force of impact suffered in tackles and "intelligent clothing" is used with sensors built into shirts and helmets. Whether this might all be a step too far for the Premier League clubs remains to be seen but Brukner's proposal would certainly interest supporters.