Manchester United Agree to Deal with Toshiba over 'Magical' Injury Predictor

There has been little doubt that over the past two seasons, Manchester United have well and truly taken the crown from Arsenal as the Premier League's most injury-prone club.

In the 2011-12 campaign, the Red Devils picked up a whopping 39 injuries over the course of the year. With the way things have started this season, that number could be set to rise.

With that in mind, the club have apparently taken drastic steps to ensure that this spree of continuous injuries does not become an ongoing dilemma at Old Trafford.

The Independent is reporting that United have signed a deal worth around £13 million with Japanese electronics tycoons Toshiba to build a state-of-the-art medical centre at Carrington, starting next month.

The object of the investment is to literally predict when a player is prone to injury. The medical centre can allegedly inform a manager of such a vulnerability from six months to even a year prior to any damage actually being caused.

This is one of those crazy moments where the sci-fi films of yesteryear suddenly don't look so silly after all.

I'm not going to pretend I have a detailed knowledge of how a medical device could possibly predict an injury to a player so far in advance.

I'm assuming that a machine would scan a player for minuscule injuries—ones that are too small and undetectable for the naked eye and other medical apparatus to pick up on—and then inform a coach that this is an area to watch out for in the future.

This is a step forward not only for technology, but also for football in general. If this centre is a success, then we could be about to see the beginning of the end of injuries (at least in regard to cartilage damage) in the beautiful game.

Players are always going to get hurt, that's just the nature of the game. Broken bones out on the pitch are sometimes unavoidable.

However, with this new facility coming into place at Old Trafford, the injury worries could soon be a long-forgotten nightmare for United fans.