Fatigue - Fixture Congestion

[meamth]

Been drumming this for ages. It's pretty silly to go hard on EVERY competitions available. Ole needs to prioritize competitions he's in, whatnot with a thin squad (in terms of quality) he has.

And also City is good in ball retention, thus their players don't need to press much. Compare to us, we couldn't keep the ball more than 10 seconds before losing it. Then players have to run around like a dog chasing ball, trying to defend/press. The later is 3 times more tiring.

To have great ball retention, players need to run more for open spaces and offers movement. It is way way more tiring to play possession football at the highest level. Pep's team do press high, and at the same time keeping the ball. That's what makes them special.

 

[Sky1981]

So playing 2 more games than city and spurs is the reason why we're crumbling?

Poor united.

 

[cyril C]

We literally have more games played than every other big club and are the only club in Europe who have played every possible weekend and every possible midweek. The only club to not have a full week rest between games to train and recover. Oh and all this while having a delayed start to the season with a smaller pre season than others, bar City.

It's a bit different than any normal big club schedule.

Also how is it 3 seasons in a row? This season is very different from the others, apart from the 2 months post lockdown last year. That relentless schedule has been this season for the entire season for United, whereas every other big team has had considerably fewer fixtures to play with a week longer to play them.

Simple reason is that Europa carries 1 more round (2 games) than CL, hence we always play 2 more games than City, even if we progress at the same level at League and FA Cup.

Squad rotation is absolutely essential, when things don't work out, stop complaining at why didn't we start Bruno and Shaw against Leicester . Set priority, rotate, and tried to get the result you want, is about all Ole can do. In fact, I thought he had done a good job these 2 weeks in terms of rotation and priority strategy. If your B+ squad failed to deliver, that's life.

To me, the only remaining question is, VDB a good buy or waste of money, what can we do to extract the best out of him (p.s. play him more while benching Bruno, is out of the question). Why Maguire is daydreaming every few games, should he rest more? So should CB be our priority this summer?

 

[bosnian_red]

So playing 2 more games than city and spurs is the reason why we're crumbling?

Poor united.

Crumbling? We were undefeated in 14 games before that loss. We are 2nd, and through to the Europa League quarter finals after recently beating City 2-0. Is losing an FA Cup tie after a hectic schedule for one team and a piss easy one for another team now considered crumbling?

And like I said. City is the only team that can actually sustain this amount of fixtures, and even they've played fewer and had random gaps midweek, unlike us who have played twice a week every single week. You mention Spurs... They're 6th and 9 points behind us. Chelsea 4th and 6 points behind. The point is that we've played a crazy amount of games, have had the worst schedule in Europe with the least amount of rest (in terms of actual games played and days rest between games, nobody has it worse than us), and yet are in 2nd place while being the favourites to win a decent trophy which gives us a huge boost for next seasons CL. It's actually a very good season in terms of how we have managed it, and this is just showing some of the difficulties we've had to handle and for people to understand you can't win every game across every competition, and there are valid reasons for loss of form or the need to rotate.

 

[bdecuc]

There's definitely a bit of fault here for Ole in not resting some of the players a bit more. Especially Rashford. He looks injured and half the player we know he can be now. (And him going on international duty this week seems totally crazy).

But 2 games a week ALL season is insane. And with a tiny summer break. It's unprecedented and you wonder what the longer effects of it might be.

The bit that I don't see highlighted very often is the effects in individual matches. Like last weekend playing a Leicester team who'd had a whole week to rest up and prepare and plan to play us. So it's not just the relative freshness of their team having played less games overall but then they get twice as much time to prepare to play us! And that doesn't happen every game but it is lots of them.

Whatever about the reasons for it and strategies we use (or not..) to get around it, any fan not factoring that in to how they view our achievements this season is not thinking.

 

[wolvored]

What's the answer then? Chuck the FA and league cups by deliberately losing the first round we play? We want a successful team and the more successful you are the more games you play. You can't have it both ways. Ole should rotate more or sub a lot earlier. Couldn't he give let's say 2 regulars a rest every game then a different 2 the next etc. Surely this is better than making wholesale changes for one match and expecting everything to gel. Everyone is roughly in the same boat start of the season, whether most teams started a week later or not. It's how you manage the squad.

 

[Ole90+3]

Very interesting post, thanks for gathering the data together. It is suprising for me to see, that our European counterparts played quite a few games less this season. Playing two times a week is a crazy schedule, and our staff seems to be doing a particularly good job keeping our players relatively healthy. Somebody pointed out the international tournament this summer, I guess next season after that event will be a very interested one due to the best players probably being extra tired and non-rested.


Ole and the team certainly should be credited for achieving what they achieved under these circumstances. But for all the complaining that the negativity is spreading across threads I find it interesting, so many feel the need to point out that our achievements have to be considered as awesome and the troubles we had must mostly be down to players being either weak or strong but fatigued. I mean, that is inviting answers isn't it? It's like baiting ^^

My take is this: the way we play, with a strong emphasis on improvising in attack, obviously works best, if you play with the best players available, asking these to come up with something good or great. As soon as they struggle or replacements have to come in, you drop one or two level if there is big skill and/or form gap. And thats one of the stories of the season. Knowing, that there is a particular playstyle we usually struggle with, the pressure on the players increases even more and as fatigue obviously influences the output of individuals as well, that is one hell of a cocktail.

There should be a few ways to engage that issue, adding more players surely being one of them, but as I said, keeping a high quality squad happy and in form is a science in its own. Hoping for that seems a bit too optimistic for me. There are more ways to tackle that, ways that have the potential to get more out of available players like system adjustments. For example I always thought, a combination of Mata, VDB and Bruno or Rashford has the potential to be quite formidable in attack. Surely, it isn't dream team material but having three ballers together on the field, I have certainly believe in them coming up with a good piece of play. To me it feels like our managers often tries to force it and who could blame him, having the most inform-player of the last year available, an awesome talent in Greenwood and based on last season to pretty dangerous strikers in Martial and Rashford. But at the end, he is the only one to make a call and I feel, it would have been worth a shot, trying to mix it up late in a game especially if before we witnessed our team struggling.

Good point. Ole has been incapable or unwilling to use other play styles that might better fit the other players in the squad.

 

[Fluctuation0161]

Was curious and decided to have a look. United, with a delayed start to the season starting a week later than most of the other league teams and barely a pre season (only City in the same boat as us), haven't had a single full week rest between games. All season. The international breaks have been the only time where we didn't follow a weekend game up with a midweek game, but those are busier then normal for those that go away with sometimes 3 fixtures being played.

Then I decided to just look up total games played for the bigger sides around europe:

1. United - 47 matches
2. City - 46
3. Arsenal - 45
4. Spurs - 45
5. Barca - 43
6. Chelsea - 43
7. Liverpool - 42
8. Leicester - 42
9. PSG - 42
10. Juve - 40
11. Milan - 40
12. Bayern - 40
13. Dortmund - 39
14. Real Madrid - 38
15. Atletico - 38
16. Inter - 37

So basically, we had a delayed start to the season by a week, have still played the most games this season in Europe, and are the only team in Europe that hasn't had a full week rest between games. It's been every weekend with a mid week fixture every single week. Of course, some of it is our own doing (dropping to the Europa League added on 2 games), but the rest we basically got screwed over by staying in every cup until the latter stages. Is it any surprise to get inconsistency from individuals and as a team when you have a crazy accumulation of fixtures? It's not like we had the luxury of rotating a lot in most of those cup games too.

This international break has come at a great time for us to get some energy back for most of them, though hopefully Bruno/Maguire/Rashford are used very sparingly as they've all been overplayed all year. But with us going out of the FA Cup, we'll finally get 2 weeks until the end of the season where we have a full week between weekend games.

This does highlight what a great season City are having, as they probably have a realistic shot at a quadruple despite the fixture congestion, but they're the only team comparable to us in terms of minutes played but are obviously streets ahead in terms of squad depth and quality throughout and having Pep there. If they don't win the Champions League, it'll probably be down to fixture congestion anyway, as they have 2-3 domestic cup games to come, the remaining league games and a potential of 5 CL games. It's also one thing handling that many fixtures and competitions on a normal schedule, and another when your season start is delayed by a month and a half after a 2-3 week broken pre season. But despite all that, I think for United it's been an excellent season and we've done really well to get to this point 2nd, and with a good shot at the Europa League.

Edit: missed the 2 club world cup games for Bayern

Interesting. I think the cause of our occasional blips is a combination of congested fixtures and our squad players being a massive drop off from our, quite good when fit & rested, starting 11.

The reason City are are less impacted by the congested fixture list is because they effectively have 2 starting 11's. The strongest squad was always going to have a massive advantage in this congested season.

 

[TMDaines]

One of the worst aspects of modern online fan culture is the default behaviour of ascribing poor performances to tiredness by default. If a team plays a lot of football, or gets a long way into the season, and a dip in form happens, people just lazily ascribe it to tiredness without making any effort to substantiate those claims.

Tiredness is certainly plausible, but people gloss over the fact that every single season the top teams, the best teams, the most successful teams, play more games on average than others due to playing in Europe and progressing in the cups.

There’s a lot of data publicly available now, but people rarely look to back up their arguments around fatigue. We’ve seen this with Leeds in recent weeks, where they are apparently tired, and hence performances have dipped. Unfortunately the data doesn’t really support that, there’s not been any obvious fall in their activity levels. More just a case of variance.

 

[AkaAkuma]

Are there any stats for most minutes played, say a 50-100 player sample?

 

[MU655]

I knew it was only so long until this excuse will rise once more. Honestly, it is Solskjaer's fault for not rotating the squad.

People are saying he didn't have options, but he did. Fernandes didn't have to play against Sociedad when we were 4-0 on aggregate.

He also kept him on longer than was needed in the win against Southampton. It has happened multiple times where subbing opportunities have been missed for Rashford and Fernandes.

De Beek could have played more earlier in the season to settle in, but he hasn't really had a proper chance.

I think the issue is our game has become so focused on Fernandes, Solskjaer is scared to drop him in any situation. It is almost like an addiction to put him in the team even when he is not needed.

 

[bosnian_red]

What's the answer then? Chuck the FA and league cups by deliberately losing the first round we play? We want a successful team and the more successful you are the more games you play. You can't have it both ways. Ole should rotate more or sub a lot earlier. Couldn't he give let's say 2 regulars a rest every game then a different 2 the next etc. Surely this is better than making wholesale changes for one match and expecting everything to gel. Everyone is roughly in the same boat start of the season, whether most teams started a week later or not. It's how you manage the squad.

I've long since said that the league cup shouldn't be a thing for any teams in any European competition. Should be exclusive to those outside of CL/EL. This season more than any before. It's why at this stage the premier league sides have like 5 games played more than other sides in Europe. It's why they get a christmas break to recover a bit and in England they add on more fixtures than normal. A 2nd domestic competition is a waste of time for most, but especially the teams already in Europe.

 

[bosnian_red]

One of the worst aspects of modern online fan culture is the default behaviour of ascribing poor performances to tiredness by default. If a team plays a lot of football, or gets a long way into the season, and a dip in form happens, people just lazily ascribe it to tiredness without making any effort to substantiate those claims.

Tiredness is certainly plausible, but people gloss over the fact that every single season the top teams, the best teams, the most successful teams, play more games on average than others due to playing in Europe and progressing in the cups.

There’s a lot of data publicly available now, but people rarely look to back up their arguments around fatigue. We’ve seen this with Leeds in recent weeks, where they are apparently tired, and hence performances have dipped. Unfortunately the data doesn’t really support that, there’s not been any obvious fall in their activity levels. More just a case of variance.

It's not about just playing more games than average, we have played literally more games than anyone else and are the only team who has not once this season had a week long recovery between games. When you're playing midweek, the training between weekend games and the midweek games tends to be a lot more recovery based with some last minute tactical training. You don't get the chance to develop too much. It's just surviving the temporary tough schedule and seeing it through... only that's been our entire season, with nobody else being in that situation where they never had a midweek break.

I guess you're probably pointing at distance run/# of sprints etc for data available. Simple minutes played and matches played, rest days between games on average also tells a story that can back up what you see. When players are fatigued, in some cases yes they'll run less or have fewer sprints, but in other cases what you'll probably see first is losses in concentration more, heavier touches than normal, more misplaced passes, etc. They'll lose sharpness. And it's definitely something we've seen at United where we have been looking more and more leggy and being sloppier in possession. Of course we are also far from the finished product so there are times we are just not good enough or naturally inconsistent, but I'm definitely seeing more and more fatigue creep in, very understandably, as it's pretty much impossible to have a worse schedule than what we've had until now, playing every midweek and every weekend, playing the maximum possible number of games up until now after having a delayed start to an already shortened season (apart from being in the qualifying rounds of the Europa League being the only thing that could've added games to us).

 

[red4ever 79]

I'm not buying the old fixture congestion, too many matches excuse. The fact is all successful teams have to play a lot of games if you want to be in the hunt for trophies. Our main problem lies on the manager's refusal to rotate often enough, playing players into the ground until they are fatigued or break down. We cant even complain that we had many injuries because up until Pogba in January we had been relatively lucky in that department also.

 

[Hoof the ball]

Here's the thing, though. We don't even rotate against the weaker clubs. Even against Sheff. Utd on multiple occasions it was still Bruno, Rashford, Martial, Greenwood, Pogba starting. If Ole doesn't think his bench options can beat Sheff. Utd then what's the point of complaining about fixture congestion? I get not being confident about our bench beating the likes of City, Chelsea and co, but Newcastle, Sheff. Utd, Burnley?

 

[NFM]

I make it a squad of 16 players , including 2 keepers. And 2 of them , both full backs are not really trusted for important matches. The Dutch lad has been a big disapointment. And the two French lads blow hot and cold, neither they or anyone else knows which it will be on any given match.
Complaints about the size of the squad should not be levelled at the manager. Everyone was urging him to dispose of players, and he has. Unfortunately the required numbers or quality have not been bought to replace them. He hopes as does everyone who wishes United well, that some of those places can be filled by youngsters from the academy, United have some very good emerging talent. They need game time, and sending them off to L1 teams is hit or miss.
Given all that and the playing schedule in a really physically and mentally demanding league, you really need a 'City standard' squad to do better than United have done to date this season. And besides Bayern, no-one else has one. Chelsea potentially have one, and recently its beginning to show.
Lets give Ole, his staff and the players a break here, they are not robots, they are doing as well as anyone could expect. Its up to the 'financial' guys to find ways of funding some sensible squad enlargement this summer, and that does not mean buying anyone who happens to be put on a 'for sale' shelf just because its an easy purchase ( I am thinking of our Dutch purchase here).

 

[Freak]

Ole has been pretty crap with his rotation to be honest. We have capable enough players who can cover Bruno, Rashford, Maguire etc.

It also doesn’t help that our backup defenders are always injured. And also Pogba who’s been having his annual his seasonal layoff.

 

[bosnian_red]

Ole has been pretty crap with his rotation to be honest. We have capable enough players who can cover Bruno, Rashford, Maguire etc.

It also doesn’t help that our backup defenders are always injured. And also Pogba who’s been having his annual his seasonal layoff.

I think Pogba is the biggest one. If he avoided injuries we could use them together regularly, then rest one or the other to keep them both fresh as required while both still playing the majority of games. Whenever he gets injured, if we don't use Bruno we are fecked. Rashford similarly, Martial if he was on form and fit could easily come in for him when required. Our squad if they stayed fit could handle it, but there's a few players who always get injured even if they don't play too frequently and puts pressure on the others to stay fit. The only 2 positions where we don't really have options to properly rotate or just anything good in general is RB or RW. Wan Bissaka is good, but there is not backup for him so he is as vital as anyone. RW just doesn't have anyone good. Then we get the issue with Maguire/Bruno/Rashford where the players who would allow us to occasionally rest them (in some combination) get way too many injuries (Bailly, Pogba, Cavani). Cavani being out means its Greenwood or Martial top with Rashford imperative on the left. Pogba out means Bruno has to play every game (no, VDB is not a #10 nor is he a creative player in the mold that suits our style). Those 3 have all been out for huge periods this season so it leads to over reliance on a few players. We saw what decent depth with Telles has done for Shaw. He's being rested when needed, we drop a bit but still get a decent level out of our backup, but as a result, Shaw is always fresh and fit and ready when needed. We need that for Wan Bissaka, and we need Pogba to stay fit so we can do that with Bruno (in a different way).

 

[Smores]

Here's the thing, though. We don't even rotate against the weaker clubs. Even against Sheff. Utd on multiple occasions it was still Bruno, Rashford, Martial, Greenwood, Pogba starting. If Ole doesn't think his bench options can beat Sheff. Utd then what's the point of complaining about fixture congestion? I get not being confident about our bench beating the likes of City, Chelsea and co, but Newcastle, Sheff. Utd, Burnley?

The bench players don't perform when he brings them in. Whether that's on Ole or the players everyone will have their own opinion but personally I'm fairly sure they're good enough to beat the teams you've listed.

We've had more than one thread down the years mocking Klopp for saying too many games, we lose and suddenly we've got excuse threads like these and others trying to spin our cup loss as almost inevitable.

 

[Hoof the ball]

The bench players don't perform when he brings them in. Whether that's on Ole or the players everyone will have their own opinion but personally I'm fairly sure they're good enough to beat the teams you've listed.

We've had more than one thread down the years mocking Klopp for saying too many games, we lose and suddenly we've got excuse threads like these and others trying to spin our cup loss as almost inevitable.

Yep!

Perhaps the bench players don't perform, but then with limited minutes how can they? You need minutes in order to develop. We talk about playing players into form, well, isn't that also true about certain bench players? If a first team player needs a run of full games to get into reasonable form, it's unfair to expect a bench player to accomplish in 10 mins here and there what a first team player gets hundreds of minutes to achieve.

 

[bosnian_red]

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Nobody can say if what happened to Eriksen is a result of the overplaying over the past year. But it can't help IMO. There has to be a serious re-evaluation of the scheduling and amount of games and it'll only lead to more issues.

 

[SuperiorXI]

The money men don't care, they want more and more games.

 

[VorZakone]

Honestly, we need less games, not more. The players themselves are ringing the bell. Is there no players union?

 

[Berbaclass]

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Nobody can say if what happened to Eriksen is a result of the overplaying over the past year. But it can't help IMO. There has to be a serious re-evaluation of the scheduling and amount of games and it'll only lead to more issues.

I fully agree with the point being made but I don't think Eriksen has played a ton of football in the last few seasons.

Edit: 60 games (including sub-apps) in two seasons isn't really that intense relatively.

 

[altodevil]

They need to unionize. Money is breaking the sport, and this is one of the ways. I mean nations league ffs. Scrap League cup too, or make it u21s

 

[Adam-Utd]

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Nobody can say if what happened to Eriksen is a result of the overplaying over the past year. But it can't help IMO. There has to be a serious re-evaluation of the scheduling and amount of games and it'll only lead to more issues.

Eriksen has barely played so doesn't really seem a relevant point - but the players for sure must be at the edge of breaking point.

 

[Berbaclass]

Eriksen has barely played so doesn't really seem a relevant point - but the players for sure must be at the edge of breaking point.

Yeah, he's appeared 88 times (The majority getting subbed on) in the last two seasons. Averaging only 47 minutes a game so I think it's fair to say its not fatigue with him in particular.

 

[CanadianUtd]

The governing bodies (UEFA) really have no shame in giving even the slightest bit of rest for the players. Makes you think what they think of them.

When the SuperLeague talk happened, I found it pretty hypocritical how as a result of it UEFA were made out to look like angels all of a sudden and everyone forgot about all the deceit and track record they’ve had. Yea the SuperLeague was a pretty dumb idea in how abruptly it was formed but they were willing to give clubs a bigger cut of the profit which UEFA barely does in comparison. They almost never adjust their schedules in the players best interests. They have all the power and resources that will fill their pockets (such as removing copyrighted uploaded content) but almost nothing for the players/clubs well being.

...& I still find it ridiculous UEFA have been given a free pass because of the SuperLeague talk. If anything, it should’ve been used as a pedestal to bring attention on their deficiencies as well.

 

[Rightnr]

One thing that I would just speculate on that is entirely conjecture on my part is in relation to the things (e.g. 'boosters') footballers might get given to maintain this rigorous schedule.

People might not like but the fact we have no positive doping tests in football is outright impossible, compared to other high-exhaustion sports and given the effort players put in like cycling and athletics.

There's just too much money in football and it's an eyes wide shut approach. Athletics and cycling are just easy scapegoats, as an example.

 

[redshaw]

Not just game minutes though, there's a lot of training in between whether you start or not. It's been a packed schedule cramming in too much. A lot of traveling is involved with less breaks, proper sleep and rest is very important.

uefa is having players play more CL games in a few years

For some reason Saudi Arabia is suggesting World Cups every two years, more games for money after covid losses. Players would never get a summers rest.

I don't want to see players flogged to ruin and have more games but less quality. Even if this Eriksen collapse is not at all related there has to be a balance of rest and recovery mentally and physically.

 

[Halftrack]

They need to unionize. Money is breaking the sport, and this is one of the ways. I mean nations league ffs. Scrap League cup too, or make it u21s

I think most countries with leagues have players' unions. England has the PFA, Italy's got the AIC, Spain's got the AFE, Germany's got the VDV... You get the picture.

I don't know how good they are about using their power, but the potential to force change is (or should) be there.

 

[shamans]

Honestly, we need less games, not more. The players themselves are ringing the bell. Is there no players union?

Hate to sound negative about this but I think players actually want less games for the same salary overall if asked. I do think something needs to be done. If you want to make more money in the game then go for it but add more substitutions or something.

 

[VorZakone]

I think more games will also affect the quality of football in a negative way. Fully fit players make for more spectacle than fatigued players.

 

[Maticmaker]

Leaving aside any 'left overs' from Covid, the next two seasons are going to be 'manic' for everyone, with the 2022 world cup played in the normal mid season (not summer) next year. This will disrupt all European leagues, possible over the next three seasons, depending on how its staged and the after effects of the pandemic.
Lets hope United (at least) have taken this into consideration in terms of the planning of its players health, as well as performance levels. With Henderson, Maguire, Shaw, (possibly AWB as well), Rashford, Greenwood, Lingard (if he's back) and if he joins us, Sancho as well, all likely to figure in England's plans (alone).
The squad system, possibly like never before, will be very important and planned rotational changes/ substitutions etc. (as well as covering actual injuries) will have to be made, regardless of whether players themselves agree. Any mistakes or failure to plan properly will not only affect success in lifting trophies, but also in determining how long playing careers may last.

 

[McGrathsipan]

They need to unionize. Money is breaking the sport, and this is one of the ways. I mean nations league ffs. Scrap League cup too, or make it u21s

Money has broken the sport. Its all about money and how much the game can generate.
Players are commodities. No more. Yes they get paid well but clubs should pay them less and spend more on helping them to prepare for life after football in parallell with their playing careers. Football is nothing without players and the businesses they work for (aka football plcs) should be made to care for players off the field

 

[justsomebloke]

We literally have more games played than every other big club and are the only club in Europe who have played every possible weekend and every possible midweek. The only club to not have a full week rest between games to train and recover. Oh and all this while having a delayed start to the season with a smaller pre season than others, bar City.

It's a bit different than any normal big club schedule.

Also how is it 3 seasons in a row? This season is very different from the others, apart from the 2 months post lockdown last year. That relentless schedule has been this season for the entire season for United, whereas every other big team has had considerably fewer fixtures to play with a week longer to play them.

Not even bar City. Their season was a week shorter than ours.