Injuries cost football clubs millions, but with the demands on players increasing, they need support to handle the fixture pile-up. That's why TransferRoom's launched the biggest injury database and predictive model in world football.
Between 40 and 50 is the amount of games in which a player can perform in the highest level. After that you drop because it is impossible to sustain the physical level. This year we can go to 70-80. It is too much.
Injuries are one of the most significant, yet least predictable, factors which shape the success of football clubs today, with a clear correlation between clubs who manage injuries better having more successful seasons.
But the risk of injury is getting higher and the fixture pile-up is getting better, with FIFA and UEFA competitions increasing in frequency and match count in recent years, and international or club tournaments now taking place most summers.
Think back to the 2023/24 season, with the quotes below by Manchester City's star midfielder Rodri on workload and injury. They came weeks before his own season-ending ACL injury, which was months after being the driving force as City winning the Premier League, FA Cup and UEFA Champions League treble.
"Between 40 and 50 is the amount of games in which a player can perform in the highest level," Rodri said. "After that you drop because it is impossible to sustain the physical level. This year we can go to 70-80. It is too much. Someone has to take care of ourselves because we are the main characters of this sport or business or whatever you want to call it."
Key injuries disrupt recruitment strategies, derail squad planning, and cost clubs millions each season.
Recent studies show the problem is only getting worse:
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In 2023/24, Europe’s top five leagues recorded 4,123 injuries, costing clubs an estimated €732million in wages.
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The Premier League alone accounted for €319m of that bill, with an injury occurring on average every 92 minutes of play.
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Injury severity in young players is rising too — the average time lost per injury for Premier League players aged under 21 has jumped from 26.5 days to 44 days in just one season.
These numbers are concerning, at a time when the game is facing fixture congestion, larger international tournaments, and longer match durations; we’re starting to see the physical toll on players’ bodies.
For clubs, they’re under pressure to be competitive on multiple fronts which means investing in a bigger squad (with all the costs that come with that model) or finding ways to better manage player fitness and availability.
Finding a way to build a squad sustainably is an incredibly challenging task, whatever way you look at it.
That is why TransferRoom have launched a groundbreaking solution, Advanced Injury Data.
But before we explain what it is, we need to understand the limitations of current methods.
Why current approaches aren't enough
Despite the scale of the problem, most clubs are still operating with incomplete or fragmented injury data. This is because verified injury data is hard to find at scale. It's time-consuming to maintain and expensive to purchase.
This results in medical teams relying on their internal records, scouts checking public sources for verification and Sporting Directors using anecdotal knowledge when evaluating transfer risk. The result?
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Recruitment blind spots: Missing historical injury patterns can lead to risky investments.
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Squad management gaps: Clubs struggle to anticipate workload-driven injury risks and the resulting costs.
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Limited predictive insights: Without large scale data, estimated the risk of investment is erratic meaning decision-makers are reactive, not proactive.
In an industry where a single injury can reshape a season or derail a transfer, this lack of clarity is no longer financially viable for clubs.
Introducing Advanced Injury Data by TransferRoom
To address this challenge, TransferRoom has launched the most comprehensive Advanced Injury Dataset in world football, available directly via API.
With our unique position as football's only transfer marketplace, we’ve built and tested an injury dataset designed to help clubs evaluate injury risks at scale and make better informed decisions.
Our data has coverage of 50 leagues globally, detailing a player injury history across 25 data points, including the type of injury, duration, expected return date, recurrence rate and more.
To ensure accuracy of data, our model is cross-referenced multiple times and continuously monitored to provide our customers with confidence, which is why our testing indicates an accuracy of around 95% across those 50 leagues.
Where the data can be taken further is around the predictive insights. Based on the large volume of data being provided, we can generate a range of forecasts on average injury duration to benchmark recovery times in players, as well as key metrics like workload and recurrence risk across shorter or longer periods.
Again, we've back-tested this data against transfers from 2023 and found our estimated recurrence risks and time out predictions to be close to 90% accurate.
Delivered via API, Advanced Injury Data integrates seamlessly into a club’s existing Business Intelligence systems and recruitment tools. This ensures that scouts, Sporting Directors, and medical teams all work from the same reliable source of truth to improve recruitment and squad management decisions.
How does Advanced Injury Data help?
With Advanced Injury Data, clubs can:
Strengthen recruitment decisions by screening targets for hidden injury patterns and workload-related vulnerabilities and making better informed decisions on whether the player is worth buying or not.
Improve squad planning by identifying potential risks for contract renewals, accounting for player history and their unique profile, to help mitigate the probability of allocating wages to a player at increasing risk of unavailability.
Improve insights available to medical & performance teams with industry standard benchmarks for recovery timelines, individual player workload and player resilience against league averages.
Maximise transfer return on investment by evaluating undervalued players who are durable and consistently available.
Why TransferRoom's data is different
We’ve heard from clubs that player welfare is a growing concern that they felt wasn’t being accurately serviced, particularly for smaller clubs who didn’t have a professional data operation.
Our injury data can be a way for clubs across the pyramid to gain better insights into the impact of injuries and improve how they think about recruitment, filtering via injury risk earlier in the process to minimise the probability of a transfer not working out.
With more AI powered tools in everyday use, clubs have a lower bar to entry for building an injury database, they just need the data to get started.
Football is getting to a point where player availability is as valuable as talent itself. Clubs that master this dimension will be the ones that recruit more effectively, reduce financial waste, and build squads capable of sustaining success across ever-demanding seasons.
Advanced Injury Data is designed to give clubs that edge. Available now via API, it brings transparency, intelligence, and predictability into one of the most pressing issues in modern football.
Learn how to access TransferRoom's Advanced Injury Data here.
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