A FORMER Burnley physio says there was little the Clarets could have done to avoid a spate of cruciate knee ligament injuries, after Lukas Jutkiewicz became the fifth Clarets player in 18 months to be diagnosed.

Claire Judd, who was a first team physio at Turf Moor between 2005 and 2007, said improvements in playing surfaces and football boots have made the injury a more common occurrence and she put the situation down to bad luck.

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Sam Vokes was the first Burnley player to suffer the injury in March 2014, followed by Kevin Long, Dean Marney and Ashley Barnes - with only two of them occurring at Turf Moor.

Judd added that the different types of ligament injuries make it difficult to find a prevention, but said isokinetic screening to determine any muscle imbalance that could make athletes prone to cruciate problems could be a preventative measure.

It is an avenue that Burnley already explore, leading Judd to agree with Burnley boss Sean Dyche that the team’s bad run of cruciate casualties is just bad luck.

 “Years ago your feet would slide through the mud, but now as the playing surfaces and the boots are getting better the feet can plant in the ground.

"The boot can stop immediately and there is no give in it, but the momentum of the body still continues to go. The ankle will twist followed by the knee,” said Judd who runs Working Injury Management.

“Plus there are different ways the injury can occur and different types of cruciate ligament tears.

“You can have the one that tears in the middle and there’s no option but to have it operated on, but the ligament can also come away from the bone, so pulls the bone out and then re-attaches itself, like Michael Duff’s did (in 2007/08). The ligament flicks back on to the bone.

“The best solution is for the treatment to get better, but isokinetic screening could detect any problems as it picks up muscle imbalance. People with an imbalance between the quads and the hamstrings would be more prone to those types of injuries.

“But we’re lucky that the treatment techniques are getting so much better.”

Jutkiewicz was injured with around 10 minutes to go, soon after coming on as a second half substitute, but managed to complete the game.

But Judd said this was not unusual.

“For the more muscular players it can act like a scaffolding for the knee,” she said.

“For example rugby players who have big quads and hamstrings can sometimes continue to play on with this type of injury.

“This can sometimes make it difficult when assessing a knee as you can’t get it to move like someone with a smaller muscle mass. This is when you’d have to rely on a scan.”

There have been a number of high profile cruciate knee ligament cases since Vokes became Burnley’s first victim, including Southampton’s former Clarets striker Jay Rodriguez.

The Burnley-born star was injured in April 2014 at Manchester City and did not kick a competitive ball again for 488 days.

More recently Derby County midfielder Will Hughes was ruled out for around six months following injury on the opening day of the season and Max Gradel suffered cruciate knee ligament damage on his Bournemouth debut at home to Leicester City on Saturday.