Revealed: The secret to smiles at Melwood

The galleries are an example of the positive mood currently lifting everyone based at the club's West Derby complex, with the Reds riding high in second place in the Barclays Premier League standings.

Now in his ninth season as part of the backroom staff, head of physiotherapy Chris Morgan has worked with a number of different groups since taking up a role within the camp.

He believes the confidence and cheer pervading the squad compares to previous peaks he has experienced with Liverpool, explaining exactly why spirits are so regularly high in midweek sessions.

In a wide-ranging Q&A, reproduced in full below, Morgan also touches on the responsibilities and demands of his role, the method of rehabilitation for long-term injuries and more directly from Melwood.

You have been a member of the backroom staff at Liverpool since 2005; have you ever known an atmosphere within a squad quite like this one?

The atmosphere and togetherness within the squad is certainly very good at the moment. There have been other occasions in my time at the club when we have got to finals and challenged at the top of the league and there are certainly similarities to the mood experienced during those periods.

How much of the credit for that would you attribute to Brendan Rodgers? When we see the images from training sessions at Melwood, there seems to be smiles on faces every day...

Those pictures reflect the mood; I think the manager, primarily, but also the coaching staff and senior players can all take credit for creating an atmosphere which is positive and relaxed but with a real drive to succeed.

On a matchday, can you talk us through your process when a player suffers an injury mid-game; what is the first thing you must do as a physiotherapist?

The most important aspect of the job for Zaf [Iqbal, first-team doctor] and I during a match is to be fully concentrated on the game. Seeing the mechanism of an injury gives lots of information about the nature of what you are likely to find when you arrive on the pitch. Once I arrive on the pitch, my first role is to assess the seriousness of the incident to determine if I require any assistance from Zaf or the paramedics. In more minor injuries my role is then to determine if the player is able to continue and relay this information back to the bench.

How difficult or otherwise is the diagnosing of any problem that a player might pick up in a match? Does that largely stem from your experience in the field?

The player themselves will usually be able to tell you if they are able to continue. If they have strained a muscle it's usually quite obvious - there is often no contact with an opponent - and they will have experience of how more severe injuries tend to feel. If they are not sure then a brief on-field assessment will usually give the answers, or if we are unsure then the player may attempt to play on and see how they feel. We never want to remove players unless absolutely necessary, as it removes a tactical substitution from the manager, so we give the player every chance to continue.

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Are there any methods you can implement beforehand to try to minimise the possibility of injuries in a match?

A large part of what we do within the medical and science departments is aimed at minimising the risk of injuries. We can't eliminate that risk in a contact sport but the screening, ongoing treatment, strappings and strength and conditioning work the players do within a football-specific training programme is all aimed at reducing the risk of injury. Similarly, the recovery process implemented from the moment a game ends is done so with the next game in mind.

Another part of your role with the club is to rehabilitate players with long-term injuries - can you give us an update?

We have had a number of fairly complex injuries this season as opposed to having a large number of injuries. We currently have fewer injuries at this stage of the season than last year, and indeed last year we had the least number of injuries in my nine seasons at the club - that is credit to the training methods implemented by the manager and his team. Long-term injuries, when they do come along, are very much a team approach. Everybody in the medical and science departments will have some involvement and we discuss them twice a day as a team in great detail. Our two rehab physiotherapists, Matt Konopinski and Paulo Barreira, along with our rehab fitness coach, Jordan Milsom, work long hours back at Melwood with the long-term injuries and have had some great results with the longer term recoveries of the likes of Daniel Sturridge, Lucas Leiva and Philippe Coutinho this season.

What are the most important elements of your assistance with a player who is on the sidelines for such an extended period of time?

We split the injured players amongst the physio staff so that each player will have a primary physiotherapist to oversee their recovery. With short- to medium-term injuries this will often be myself. In the long-term injuries I will tend to be involved in the diagnosis and overall management decisions with Glen Driscoll and Zaf and we will then support the treating physiotherapist throughout the rehabilitation process. As I mentioned, we approach every injury as a team so that when things go well we succeed together and when things don't go quite as planned - as is often the case when we are looking to accelerate these injuries as quickly as possible - we look for the answers within.

In the absence of European football, how has playing fewer matches than usual this season aided the injury situation?

I think it's well known that the risk for football injuries is much higher during games than training, so the more often you play a game the more chance you have of getting injured. Often these injuries are due to contact; at the start of the season we sustained a number of injuries due to tackles - for example, Aly Cissokho, Coutinho, Glen Johnson and Sturridge - which are very difficult to prevent. However, recovery time between games is vital to allow both maintenance of performance and also to reduce the risk of injury. The players will all be encouraged to make full use of our excellent soft tissue team, under the guidance of senior masseur Paul Small between games, and Ryland Morgans will analyse the players and implement recovery strategies as required. During these periods it's vital that the squad depth enables you to make changes to protect the players, otherwise despite our recovery strategies, injuries will occur. Hopefully this is something we will have to prepare a lot more for next season when we could potentially have many more midweek games.