There were a lot of rumours when Vlad first arrived that many of our squad were not happy with his training methods, so is it too hard? Last nights game was probably the first time we had a reasonably strong squad to choose from, but many of the players seemed very lethargic, so are some of them knackered already? To be fair to Vlad, up until now he has had a threadbare squad to choose from and maybe he has had little choice but to work the players he had at his disposal very hard, and maybe that is beginning to come home to roost, especially for the young players who have had to step up perhaps before some of them were ready. The very short break between last season ending and this one starting has added additional pressure to many managers and teams, and we have possibly been one of the most affected teams being as we had as many 17/18 players unavailable for our first few games and many of those were U23 players. Add to that our new manager knew very little about the rigours of The championship let alone English football when he first arrived, then maybe it is amazing we are doing as well as we are. Vlad has had quite a learning curve to work through at WFC and maybe he needs to take a step back and start to think about possibly reining back on his training regime. Could it be with two games a week and the workload he was forced to put on many of our young players until the window finally closed the players now need to leave less on the training ground and concentrate their efforts more on the actual match day?
Squad rotation is a good solution to lethargic and fatigued players. I agree the Pre Season break was almost non-existent, but all sides had to cope with such unforeseen circumstances. They are professional athletes and if they feel overworked they may need to say something. We have quite a large squad, but we seem to be decimated by injuries every season. Player burn out is expected and I would be interested to see if it's an early down tools performance last night or just a one off. Because of poor transfer windows, money splashed on luxury signings and not on key areas, the players who are fit are being overworked and playing in positions and into a system they are not comfortable with. That tells me that mentality, the players are not such a collective unit as some of us thought this season. If Ivic's methods are pushing them too much, perhaps he needs to find a new way to take control of what is wrong at the moment and also get it into Floppo's fat head that he is left with table scraps.
For any athlete training is usually monotonous and the job of the coach is to devise drills to keep the players enthused,never offer a drill that you as a player wouldn't enjoy. However most players would rather play than train,I watched Mary Joe Fernandez warm up at The AE at Aorangi Park and she looked bored to tears. She got to the quarter finals that year so it clearly worked! Players in a team will always have a moan.The athlete's book of excuses is a three volume novel. Too windy,too cold,balls wrong,court too slippery,bad bounces,my partner's fault,the umpire was poor,the linesmen blind,my opponent lucky.... In short it's always the coach's fault in some capacity. Wrong. It's down to the athlete. Get on with it!
Last nights night's performance was and is not down to training. They have got this down nearly perfectly to individual needs of players and rotating as and when is necessary. Last night was down to being outworked and out thought by the opposition. We carried far too many players. There wasn't anything right about yesterday from formation to desire. You will not win anything without showing heart and care. Simply it was shocking in every aspect.
I read somewhere that Bielsa at Leeds looks for two things when recruiting players - natural energy and technical control. Putting the technical control aside for the moment, Bielsa believes that players either possess 'natural energy' or they don't, it's not a question of fitness either, it's a sort of buzz or effervescence in their play. Do our players possess this? (lol) For me, our players always seem to have the opposite of Bielsa's natural energy, I'd call it Watfordy Lethargy. We have had enough different training regimes in the last 18 months so maybe we are just recruiting the wrong players in the first place, as others on this forum have been saying for time!
I'd imagine Bielsa demanded total control over first team signings as part of going to the club and it's worked wonders. We would never give a coach that much input, despite what any exec at the club says in a YouTube video. I view our coach/transfer policy like that scene in Apollo 13 where they have to create CO2 scrubbers from a selection of random items. Here you go coach, make that work.
You sir are a steely eyed missileman. Imagine Bielsa at London Colney doing his shopping down the Bedmond precinct. He would have decked Floppo, Scott and sundry to hell by now.
Didn't Pearson deck one of those 3? And let's be honest Duxbury has got the kind of demeanour that asks to be punched-allegedly of course!
That's the absolute opposite of our recruitment, which is all stats and money, completely ignores whether the player has any drive, backbone and self belief against any odds. I'm not sure we're quite there, but we've got shades of Sunderland with our talented but dysfunctional squad.
I think there was literally one rogue, unattributed (for obvious reasons/as standard, I freely admit) report of 'players' being unhappy with the intensity of training in one of the redtops a few weeks ago, and that's about it isn't it?
It must be difficult to get much constructive training done when we are playing Saturday Tuesday/Wednesday to be fair.
I've commented on this a few times before with regards to our drop off after the Cup Semi-Final, but too many of our players were, and still are, the wrong side of 30, which is on the downward peak of their careers. We had the oldest team in the PL last season with the exception of Palace sometimes. Now, we still have many of the players on the downward slopes of their careers, combined with more players still in their late teens/early-20s i.e. not yet at their peaks which generally begins around 23-24. Most of our players are either on the old and creaky side, or on the still slightly stroppy adolescent side You mention Leeds there, but look at the ages of their team - all of their 10 most used outfield players so far this season are between the ages of 23-29; that is not a coincidence. I do agree that there's still an extra level of intensity many of our players can probably reach relative to where they are now, but some of the lack of pace and fluidity in our play will definitely be due to a few too many rusty or loose cogs in the machine.
