One of the biggest talking points from this week’s first round of Premier League fixtures happened at Stamford Bridge, almost 24 hours before the Reds walked out at the Britannia Stadium for our first game of the season.
The incident was involving Chelsea physio Eva Carneiro who, with the game between the ten-man Blues and Swansea City tied at 2-2, was summoned on to the pitch to treat an injured Eden Hazard – leaving Jose Mourinho’s side with just nine players to work with.
One of the latest authority figures to have his say on the matter is Liverpool’s former head of sports science, Peter Brukner, who can be seen in the picture above conducting Joe Cole’s medical at Melwood back in 2010.
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The former fitness guru has slammed the Portuguese manager, who was highly critical of Carneiro after the game, and has expressed his belief that Mourinho owes his entire medical staff an apology.
“I thought it was appalling behaviour by the manager,” he told the Liverpool Echo. “He has a player who has gone down, who has remained down and the referee obviously considered it serious enough to summon on the doctor and the physio.
“They went on as they must do when they are summoned on and the player is down, and as a result the player had to come off the ground. What do you expect the doctor to do? Just ignore the referee beckoning them on?”
Despite Hazard having to leave the pitch, having received treatment on it, Chelsea were able to hold out for their point – having earlier seen goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois sent-off for bringing down Bafetimbi Gomis. However, Brukner insists that no member of staff deserves to be chastised so publicly, regardless of the situation.
“Maybe he should be criticising his player for staying down, rather than the medical staff,” he added. “The medical staff were only responding to the referee’s instruction to come and treat the player, who was on the ground.
“So then to criticise the medical staff publicly in the way that he did was absolutely appalling behaviour. The medical staff deserve a public apology and I’m very disappointed that the club hasn’t come out and done something to support them – they were just doing their job.
“Our first priority as doctors and physios is the health and safety of the individual player, and that’s what they were attending to. They were doing their job and they’ve been criticised very publicly for doing the job. I think that’s a very disappointing result.”