The Premier League staff behind the Premier League team

Obbi Oulare and Victor Ibarbo have come to the right club if they need their diet sorting out, if they have an ingrowing toe nail or are troubled by long-standing toothache. No stone is left unturned when it comes to preparing the club’s highly-paid players and highly-tuned athletes for life in the top flight of English football. Watford provide Premier League treatment for Premier League players.

“We are bringing in players from bigger clubs and we want to make sure we show them that’s where we are heading,” said the club’s head of medical Richard Collinge. “We are not there yet but that’s where we want to be heading. We want to make sure they get exactly the same medical care as they get at the big clubs they have signed from.”

Some A&E departments are not as well staffed as Watford’s medical department. There are three part-time doctors, two sports therapists, a Spanish therapist who has worked for Gino Pozzo before, a fitness coach and three sport scientists – one whom is an intern. Oh, and there is Peter, the chef who makes sure the players’ dietary requirements are catered for at hotel stays before away games and even at Sopwell House before home games.

And if, for whatever reason, a player’s injury cannot be solved in-house then, like Tommie Hoban when diagnosed with a career-threatening ankle problem in 2013, there is the option of sending them overseas.

“Mr Pozzo has been very supportive with my suggestions about how we take things forward,” said Collinge. “If a player needs specialist treatment then there have been private jets put on and we can fly a player anywhere in the world. That’s the kind of commitment that Mr Pozzo has for our players. That’s quite refreshing. To get in and stay in the Premier League you need that budget.”

It’s all a far cry from the summer of 2011 when Collinge was part of the Malky Mackay induced exodus, both on and off the field, to Cardiff, amid times of austerity following the madcap spending in the previous Premier League sojourn and aborted Championship play-off final bid.

“Times were hard then,” Collinge said. “Money was tight. We had about half the size medical team we have now and had to justify every single spend.” Collinge worked under the weird and wonderful regime of Vincent Tan at Cardiff and then followed Mackay to Wigan Athletic last year before coming full circle and returning to Watford in February.

“Richard is an extremely valuable addition to our medical team,” said chief executive Scott Duxbury of Collinge’s appointment. “I’m delighted that the club has secured his services and I look forward to him having a very positive impact.”

Much has changed but some of the protocols and methods Collinge had introduced, more than four years ago, were still in place at London Colney when he returned. Now things have gone to another level altogther.

“Yes, we have a bigger staff but you have to be careful that the team behind the team doesn’t become too big,” he said. “That’s when things get lost in communication. I think we are at the optimum size medically.”

Collinge and his staff are in at 7am every morning preparing the training ground for the arrival of the players at 9am. Following a meeting among his staff, Collinge then presents a daily medical bulletin to Quique Sanchez Flores. It’s not just a case of, ‘He’s fit and he’s unfit’. It is a bulletin formulated with surgical precision.

“We create a traffic light system,” Collinge explained. “We strap sensors to different parts of the body and look at their joint range of motion. We have strength devices and isokinetic machines so we can start to see signs of a restricted joint or a tight or fatigued muscle. Those in the red zone are the ones who have a 20 per cent difference to the norm. We then tell the coach we need to pull those players out and send them into the gym and they do foam rolls or a massage to get them into the amber or green zone. An amber one would be where we maybe modify their training and they do part of the session and then drop out. It’s about presenting that accurate information to the head coach and saying, ‘Let’s work together’.

The forensic attention to detail is clearly paying dividends because, at the last count, only Joel Ekstrand is injured, the defender working his way back from an ACL. That virtual clean bill of health can, in part, being proactive instead of reactive when it comes to injuries.

“There has been a big swing and now it’s all about injury prevention,” said Collinge. “We do a lot of activation, almost a warm up before the warm up. The days of a player rocking up at 20 past 10, whacking a bit of toast down his neck and going out to train are long gone.”

Typically, players use resistance bands and look to gradually build in more dynamic and ballistic movement, all overseen by Gianni Brignardello, the head of sports science. Gone are the days of static stretching. There also use shock-wave therapy machines to help with tendon and soft tissue disorders and a Compex machine to, apparently, distress the muscle. Watford were also the first Championship team to incorporate extreme-cold cryotherapy into their recovery programme. The players are also screened from top to toe when they sign, firstly at Harley Street and then at London Colney. It’s there where Collinge discovers just how well matched their DNA is to top-level sport.

“If these guys weren’t playing Premier League football they would be representing their country at some sport because they are just top level athletes,” he said. “These guys have got to be good athletes. This is what I’m passing on to the Academy and youth team physios. If they are coming to us at age five, it can’t just be football, football every day. They need a good physical, global background. These are the guys that become robust athletes as they train hard and recover hard. Then, if and when they come over and join the first team, they understand what the screening, hydration and nutrition process is.”

It’s about creating a winning culture, one geared towards high achieving and high performance. The players don’t yet take their own mattress and pillows to away trips like Team Sky and Southampton do but you suspect it won’t be long before they do.

“Yes, the players are spoilt rotten but everything is set up and geared for three points and so they are not asking for strapping or about hotel food,” said Collinge. “[General manager of Team Sky] Dave Brailsford talks about that extra one per cent mentality and that’s what we try and do here.”

Click here to see how Tommie Hoban benefited from the club’s attention to medical detail

More Watford related news