Last season you have to factor in Covid and the fixtures that were lost and then had to be caught up on as a result
At the risk of sounding cynical, fuck what is anathema to what football is all about…we are a side with injury prone players and those players tend to be ones we can least do without.
Now I was watching a documentary about Japan Airlines Flight 123, a fatal accident years in the making. Stress fractures in a poorly repaired aft bulkhead (the repair was made in 1978, the crash occurred in 1985) developed after constants hours of flight time putting strain on a part of the plane made to prevent rapid depressurisation. Then one day it broke, the depressurisation occurred, breaking off the verticle stabiliser and severing the hydraulic fuel lines….In a word the plane became impossible to fly and despite heroic attempts by the pilot plummeted into Mount Fuji.
The point being if you have players prone to stress related breakage, the more they play the more likely they invariably break down. So yes, the less fixtures we have to play absolutely the better…given we don’t have the squad depth to play all competitions