Welshred is god on here, mate, but I didn't think the article contradicted him in its substance. To me, it gave me insights on how a doctor sees and analyze details from what clues. This relates closely to my day job, I often do failure analysis on various systems (mechanical, structural, electronic, thermal, optical, radar, etc.) and they all rely on different clues. Basically, you get some bread crumbs and you have to identify the bakery.
Personally, I think that article is a bit pointless and quite speculative (and in my humble but educated opinion ill-informed)
For instance, the author concluded that it was a Grade 2 tear for the following reasons (with my responses as to why they are stupid)
- high intensity kicking mechanism : since it was high intensity, why wouldn't it be a grade 3??
- Allisson saying he felt like something hit in the calf : everyone with a calf strain/tear reports this feeling, it's painful!
- his walking being affected afterwards: this is actually the criteria by which we define severe and non-severe calf strains. in this sense there's no medium category and severe/non-severe are different from the grading systems that are sometimes used.
- Klopp's saying his injury was a serious one: I doubt Klopp uses the severity of the strain to describe the severity of the injury. I would have thought that anything that makes our keeper go off during a game and makes them likely to miss multiple games is a serious injury. that say's nothing about whether the strain itself is mild moderate or severe
- He's been wearing a walking boot : this is the standard initial management for every athlete with a calf strain. you go into a walking boot with a heel lift and some crutches. this helps to reduce the pain by resting the muscle
Secondly, he pointed out the difference between Grade 1 to Grade 3 tears based on how much of the muscle fibre was torn. The system he was using is actually not in line with any of the modern grading systems for muscle tears. For instance, common systems are clinical systems (usually grading in terms of how much function is lost), ultrasound based systems, MRI based systems and society consensus based systems (e.g British Athletic system and such). Overall, these are more useful as a way of comparing like for like (i.e. trying to ensure that you manage all Grade 2's the same way and all Grade 3's the same way etc. However, very few of them have any useful predictive value in how long the athlete will be out for (except for perhaps some MRI based studies).
At the end of the day, the injury is the injury. Quoting 3 weeks plus is basically not saying anything as nearly all calf strains in professional athletes (even minor grades) usually take
AT LEAST 15-20 days to return to play, based on a few different studies. So if he returns faster than 3 weeks then so what? Good for us!
If he doesn't, then what has speculating really achieved? In this sense, I think the speculation was kinda pointless anyway.
