Premier League injuries are ten-a-penny.
By that I mean that every club suffers from players being out injured, so much so that when it happens we fans just accept it and move on, knowing that there is probably someone else in the squad that can step in and fill the void - provided they aren't injured too.
But football players - especially those in the upper echelons of the pro game - get paid a hell of a lot of money and that got my brain matter fired up enough to ask - how much money has been spent on players who are just sitting on the bench and not playing?
We've all heard the stories about injury prone players who are back in the treatment room no less than five minutes after making an exit.
One of the most memorable of those from my youth is Darren 'Sicknote' Anderton. A top player when he was fit, Anderton picked up his moniker for being an almost ever present presence in the Spurs treatment room; the guy just couldn't catch a break.
Today we have Arsenal's Jack Wilshere facing the same kind of criticism that his North London rival faced back when I was a peskie (a young man) - the guy just cannot shake off injuries and he smokes too! Now surely that can't be accepted.
Let's face it, as fans we have a right to criticise and question the fitness of players, don't we?
I for one would have no problem at all grabbing a fag out of Jack's handsomely paid mouth and informing him that the receipt for my £2000 season ticket should not be used to light coffin nails for him to enjoy.
With anger at such flippant disregard for fitness bubbling under the surface, I decided to take a deeper look into just how much injuries have cost EPL clubs down the years, and the answer it seems, would be the proverbial shedload!
I'm lucky enough to do some work with PhysioRoom.com, who have covered all of the Premier League injuries that have been suffered since the turn of the century. So with my thinking cap on and calculator in hand, I decided to investigate the cost of injuries and came up with the EPL's most injured XI players this century.
The cost has been based on an average Premier League daily wage and calculated against the number of days that each player has spent out of action (according to PhysioRoom).
What the results show is that almost £150m has been spent paying for players to be injured.
Let's write that again - £150,000,000!
That's £50m more than the entire GDP of the Falkland Isles for crying out loud, imagine the penny sweets you could buy with that!
Anyway, enough ranting, below is the most injured Premier League XI of the 21st Century - take a look at just how much these guys have cost your club through being injured, and ask yourself, were they worth it?
I'm pretty sure there are a few things that your club could have bought that are more productive and considerably less expensive too.
Let me know what you think in the comments below or follow me on Twitter and give me some grief.