The thing about the PL which strikes you when you’re not in it is the pace. I think it’s broadly accepted that a player arriving in January will find it extraordinarily difficult compared to one who has a full pre season.
For the first 1/3 of last season Wirtz looked hopelessly lost. Much less of a surprise once you understand the extent to which Liverpool’s pre season collapsed.
There was some discussion about him being played in a less than ideal position and I think that’s true but the guy is good enough to play 2 or 3 positions. Even when played where he ought to be he struggled because he lacked the acceleration to be where he needed to be and was surrounded by players with the same issue.
If he had cost £25/30 million I may have thought ‘there’s potential there’, but for the cost & the little I saw of him I can’t see why he is so highly rated. Of course he is young & he’s time to fulfill any potential he has.
It doesn’t alter the fact he was a major disappointment in the German shirt in much the same way Rice has been so far for us. I believe Rice may suffer from big game nerves as he showed what he is capable of for much of the past season. He just tends to disappear in the big one off games. He was annomous in the Euros finals for both West Ham & Arsenal.
Wirtz on the other hand still needs to do a lot for me to believe he has the talent to start with.
I don’t disagree but equally I do think the expectations on and criticisms of players as they approach 60 games per season are beginning to get seriously ludicrous.
Declan Rice has played 62 games in about 45 weeks for club and country running between 7-8 miles per game he shouldn’t even be playing.
Tuchel has conspired to leave himself with possibly the two worst full backs available O’Reilly inverted so far inside last night at times he was on the opposite wing leaving Rashford totally isolated and alone and the less said about Spence the better.
We have a centre back pairing that don’t communicate and again a midfield that don’t compliment one another. Eze comes on and looks anonymous and Saka like Rice is half cocked and shouldn’t be there Madueke and Gordon are just not good enough the whole thing is a mess.
It’s an interesting issue. Kane has had the heaviest workload over the season and yet he just carries on. The overall French and Brazilian workload are higher than anyone else in the tournament yet one team look fresher than the other. The Moroccans gave had one of the lightest season workloads but there are different questions to be asked there.
I could be wrong but I’m not sure Harry Kane, Joao Neves, Mbappe or Dembele even with the World Club Cup included have played more games than Declan this past season but anyway not all players are physically the same nor are their games.
Regardless of all that and for whatever reason Declan Rice doesn’t look fit and neither does Bukayo Saka and playing them both isn’t optimal.
So Newcastle apparently about to bring Bazoumana Toure in for a medical and also (according to Sky Sports) supposed to be in for Switzerland’s Johan Manzambi. From what I have seen of Manzambi he looks very useful for a young midfielder but if he keeps playing this well in the World Cup, I fully expect someone else to come in and snatch him before we do
Yes. He has played 66 games this season (including the World Cup so far). He runs between 9 and 11 kilometres per game apparently. Puts Rice’s figures in perspective.
When I lived in Norwich between 1979 & 1983, my next door neighbour was a Norwich first team forward, Keith Robson.
He told me that the players trained 4 hours PER WEEK plus the 1st team played the reserves in a full 90 minutes game each Wednesday.
The players never ran out of steam each Saturday. Players today are of course much fitter & faster due to the intensive training they now receive. However, even the pre-match warm ups are now so intensive that many players look exhausted before the match has started.
I am not advocating a return to 4 hours a week training but do feel that training schedules should be reduced. Players would cope more easily with more matches, would more easily cope with each 90 minutes & may not be injured so often as their bodies would not be pushed to the absolute limits before they even get onto the pitch.
So cut down the intensive training. The players will remain as fit & may improve footballing skills by playing the extra games without being dead on their feet before they kick off. I suspect players would rather be playing to maintain fitness rather than going through yet more intensive fitness sessions that probably don’t involve kicking a ball.
I agree, but then I’m intrigued as to why you might still have intensive training. At Wrexham Monday is a rest day, they train Tuesday and Wednesday, do tactical stuff on a Thursday and usually that’s it. When there’s a midweek game there’s just tactical work on a Monday and that’s it. We’ve not trained more than 3 days a week since we re-entered the EFL. I can recall one training injury and that was when a player fell over a slightly raised sprinkler head so intense stupidity rather than intensity.
I have no idea how intensive the training actually is, but something is clearly wrong when fit, young 20/30 year olds are complaining of being exhausted just a few weeks into every new season.
Perhaps some of the problem is that the fitness staff feel that they have to justify their positions & salaries.
I feel that the amount of training needs to be better balanced, taking into account the number of games likely to be played over a season.
The Norwich approach to the training v playing balance is all wrong. We try & avoid about 10 games a season by making sure we are knocked out of the cup competitions early.
