I'm sure this makes internal logical sense but there is actually no evidence to support this at all and actually just reads like confirmation bias leading to tautology, i.e the players that aren't injured aren't injured. If what you are saying about upper-body mass is true, it makes no sense that ACLs are almost 3x more likely in womens football than mens, or that our worst ACL victim was Ben Chilwell, or that Adama Traore has never had a knee injury in his professional career. There is no evidence to show that any factors conclusively increase the risk of injury
other than previous injuries and age. While it is common sense that ligaments and tendons can tear under strain, they can only get stronger under strain too. Human bodies are fantastically adaptive. There's just nothing to show that people putting on muscle mass is going to injure them more.
We do know that
injury risk increases as athletes approach their 20s. The problem is, even though we know this is a crucial time for career injury prevention, this is the precise time where coaches limit physical training (ie gym) in favour of tactical work at both academy level and especially for those transitioning to senior football. They simply aren't going to be given the time in the gym to build strength and conditioning with a targeted plan.
The
Howden injury reports confirm that young players disproportionately bear the cost of injuries. The report even understates the problem because it doesn't look at the proportion of players <25 vs 26+. The truth is players are more likely to get injured simply because they are young.
Good thing then that BlueCo haven't decided to go all in by buying exclusively young players in their peak injury years..