WHATEVER happens at Bolton's Reebok Stadium this evening, Middlesbrough fans can at least console themselves with the knowledge that their club is top of one table.

Chelsea might be striding clear at the top of the Premiership but, when it comes to injuries, Boro stand head and shoulders - perhaps that should be hamstrings and ligaments - above the rest.

A staggering eight first-team players were either injured or doubtful ahead of today's trip to Lancashire, with at least three - Gaizka Mendieta, Malcolm Christie and Ugo Ehiogu - unlikely to play again this season.

Hardly an ideal situation but, some 40 miles up the A19, Newcastle's medical staff know exactly how their Middlesbrough counterparts feel.

The club's physios had just about worked their way through a catalogue of broken bones when the transfer window opened to admit two new patients in Jean-Alain Boumsong and Celestine Babayaro, who both broke down within weeks of joining the Magpies.

The problem isn't confined to the North-East. Pick a Premiership dream team from players currently nursing long-term injuries and you're able to pair Ruud van Nistelrooy with Djibril Cisse in attack, name Arjen Robben and Xabi Alonso in midfield, and still have space for Sol Campbell and Robert Huth at the back.

Of course there's nothing new in players nursing knocks. But, despite the massive advances that have been made in sports science over the last decade, more footballers are getting injured now than ever before.

Clubs might be employing a dazzling array of backroom boys recruited to aid recovery and rehabilitation but, rather than keeping their players fit, they seem utterly unable to reverse a worrying trend.

Nutritionists tell footballers what to eat, psychologists tell them what to think and lifestyle gurus tell them how to stay focused when they leave the confines of the training ground.

But, given the raft of players currently laid up, clubs might be better off employing television reviewers to tell their injured stars how to negotiate the perils of daytime TV. For the next few months, that's all a host of Premiership stars will have to worry about.

The comparison with 40 years ago is as stark as it is puzzling. Back then, players would think nothing about spending their afternoon in the bookies and their evening in the pub. But, come three o'clock on a Saturday, they were on the field and raring to go.

In 1965-66, Liverpool won the title using just 14 players - today they'd be lucky to get to the end of August with a squad that size.

The host of new roles that have emerged at football clubs clearly have a purpose but, given the current injury glut, it is tempting to think that the mass of technical experts now being employed in the game could actually be creating more problems than they are solving.

Years ago, a player feeling a twinge on Monday would have rested on Tuesday, run it off on Wednesday and been back in the side the following weekend.

Now, they would be more likely to spend three days on the sidelines before undergoing a series of scans that would reveal a tiny tear of some obscure muscle.

Back on the Saturday? Not when a mandatory four-week recovery plan needs adhering to first.

Multi-million pound technology means more chance of putting things right, but it also means more chance of identifying that something's gone wrong.

And, up and down the country, there seems to be something going wrong every time a footballer steps on to the pitch at the moment.

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