With the Premier League opener just under a week away, and with the likes of Liverpool’s James Milner, Everton’s Muhamed Besic and Arsenal’s Jack Wilshere likely to miss their first games, injuries have been something of a talking point. But what if there was a way to predict and stop a player from getting injured before it even happened? Impossible? Well, researchers from the University of Birmingham and Southampton Football Club have been trying to achieve just that.

They’ve been busy analysing the performance of youth players and observing the links between their training and injury. Their findings have recently been published and hint that footballers’ injuries could be predicted by assessing their workloads during training and competitive matches.