Former England physio says Premier League clubs losing £30m a year to injuries

Speaking to OLBG, Hancock said: “In terms of cost spent on trying to keep individual players fit, it depends on the board and the mentality of the board, it comes from the owners.“

Certain teams like Chelsea, have spent over £30million on wasted salaries last season. So that's £30million that they've had nothing back from. That's a lot.

“So if you spend 100 grand, 200 grand, a million, two million, it's nothing in the remit of what goes on. And to be honest, you could have a therapist per player for that sort of money.

“So there shouldn't be any excuses used in terms of injuries and hamstrings in particular. Nowadays, that shouldn't happen.

“If it is happening, then there's either a problem in regards to communication of information, there's a problem regarding strategy, there's a problem with regarding moving from one department to another to allow the player to return.

“The job of a performance director, like I used to do, was you've got to go in and you've got to identify what those problems are and sort them out quickly and make sure that that doesn't happen when that player comes out from an injury.

“Most of the time now, these teams should have a department which is purely down to prevention.

“Forget about players who are injured, let's talk about players who are fit. So a department, a whole department designated to what we are doing to maintain these players.

“You see some teams that do that very well and you see other teams that don't do that very well and the statistics don't lie. The days of saying ‘we were just unlucky this season’ you don't have any time anymore in sport.

“The scrutiny and the information and the amount of data and the amount of people that you have now working… I started in football in 1993, we had one fitness coach and two physios. I left Chelsea in 2008. I think we had 16 staff in total. I should think now they're in their 20s.”