Agree with the concerns raised on here. Some important players only just returning now. One friendly cancelled due to covid scare. It's essential we start the season strong as we saw what can happen last year.
The bizarre panic about players not being ready for the new season
- Thread starter TheReligion
- Start date
It's not panic, good fitness level gives a huge advantage in early stages. Good start is crucial.
Mostly our first team is returning now which is a concern.
Mostly our first team is returning now which is a concern.
Had a similar pre season last year and started the season terribly
Bizarre?
Every team that had a poor pre-season started last season poorly and took 6-7 games to get going. Not just in England but throughout Europe. Ourselves (2 wins in the first 6), City (3 wins in the first 8), Chelsea (2 wins in the first 6), Inter (3 wins in the first 7), Sevilla (2 wins in the first 6). Every one of those teams improved drastically after that period, including City and Inter obviously going on huge winning runs to run away with their leagues. We had a 34 day break between the two seasons there, and every other team I listed had a 34-37 day break as well. The break our English players (and Fred) will have between their international matches and the start of this season - 34 days. The same.
A good pre-season is about the players having a decent break to recharge their batteries and get over niggling injuries, then getting a handful of friendly games to build their match fitness back up. It shouldn't be as bad this season as our players had a 2 week break between the end of last season and the start of the internationals (plus of course some of our players had longer breaks as they didn't go to or as far in the tournaments), but it's still far from ideal.
I haven't really been reading the threads so maybe I'm wrong, but I feel the OP's claim of 'unable to play football again or be majorly unfit', 'unable to kick a ball or run 100m' is a massive exaggeration of what people are saying. If not then fair enough, but if it is then he's basically panicking about people supposedly panicking.
Every team that had a poor pre-season started last season poorly and took 6-7 games to get going. Not just in England but throughout Europe. Ourselves (2 wins in the first 6), City (3 wins in the first 8), Chelsea (2 wins in the first 6), Inter (3 wins in the first 7), Sevilla (2 wins in the first 6). Every one of those teams improved drastically after that period, including City and Inter obviously going on huge winning runs to run away with their leagues. We had a 34 day break between the two seasons there, and every other team I listed had a 34-37 day break as well. The break our English players (and Fred) will have between their international matches and the start of this season - 34 days. The same.
A good pre-season is about the players having a decent break to recharge their batteries and get over niggling injuries, then getting a handful of friendly games to build their match fitness back up. It shouldn't be as bad this season as our players had a 2 week break between the end of last season and the start of the internationals (plus of course some of our players had longer breaks as they didn't go to or as far in the tournaments), but it's still far from ideal.
I haven't really been reading the threads so maybe I'm wrong, but I feel the OP's claim of 'unable to play football again or be majorly unfit', 'unable to kick a ball or run 100m' is a massive exaggeration of what people are saying. If not then fair enough, but if it is then he's basically panicking about people supposedly panicking.
It's just a disappointment that we have to wait for few more weeks to see our full strength team.
Also we have to see likes of Lingard and James. That can put anyone in depression
Also we have to see likes of Lingard and James. That can put anyone in depression
you somewhat answered your own concern there. It’s not really a problem for the returning players who were here with us last season. More so the new incoming players who’ll be making their debuts and such. Especially since they are coming in from different leagues.
It’s 1 thing in itself to adjust to a new club. It’s another animal doing so in the EPL. It’s been well documented in the leagues past that not everyone settles in right away. Why in the past the emphasis has been put on English clubs to get their business done early on in the summer transfer market so the incoming players have time to at least practice and get a feel of their teammates and such. It’s a culture/league change and finding that wavelength to catch on with the rest of the teammates is huge.
…we got really lucky with how easily Bruno adjusted. It was virtually a seamless transition not just to an English league but also in the middle of the season. Almost unheard of. He was definitely the exception and not the rule. Generally speaking, you want to give new incomings some sort of grace period allowing them the optimal time to be up to speed as best they can. It’s just about optimizing that really. Covid/scheduling and all, Varane+Sancho will be put to the test. No practicing with the new teammates, no friendlies with the team, and will be put into the deep end of the English waters with every game they play having immediate consequences for the club standings wise. So I really hope for both their & United’s sakes, they are fortunate with their transitions!!
There goes another thread i don't want to see bumped for all the wrong reasons....
If i were a betting man, and you put a possibly unfit top world 11 players vs a fit Bielsa team in a 90 minute match, i'd think twice who to bet on.
We are not in the 80's anymore. Quality only gets you so far. Fitness is key in todays football.
If i were a betting man, and you put a possibly unfit top world 11 players vs a fit Bielsa team in a 90 minute match, i'd think twice who to bet on.
We are not in the 80's anymore. Quality only gets you so far. Fitness is key in todays football.
not even purely fitness. Chemistry is massive. Most players don’t just gel with new teams/teammates in new leagues seamlessly. And ones that are going to be relied on as major components for their new clubs to have success.
If we lose the first few games of the season there’s going to be some serious egg on faces for a few people.
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It's a legitimate concern, our best start to a season post-Fergie was in 2017 when we had a normal pre-season with all of our new signings.
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Why bother with training at all? Just turn up on a Saturday lads and remember your kit. These are professional footballers after all.
We should have enough to beat Leeds but it's a fair concern that we won't be in the best shape to start the season. Again.
We should have enough to beat Leeds but it's a fair concern that we won't be in the best shape to start the season. Again.
There’s obviously a difficult balance for the club right now between the benefit of rest after an insanely long and packed schedule and the benefit of minutes in competitive games. Rest is an under-rated element of peak conditioning and over a long season can have benefits that won’t be apparent for a while. One thing’s for sure, we’re not the only club who will be agonising over this rest vs early match fitness conundrum.
Fans like to moan but I’m happy enough to leave it up to the sports scientists at the club to do what’s best for the team. Second guessing the experts does seem silly. So on that basis I generally agree with the OP.
Fans like to moan but I’m happy enough to leave it up to the sports scientists at the club to do what’s best for the team. Second guessing the experts does seem silly. So on that basis I generally agree with the OP.
I think it's quite justified to be honest after last season's prep and nightmare start
Over recent years we've always been scrambling around in the market in the final weeks, and that hasn't helped
We're a bit more settled now though, so hopefully it'll be better
Over recent years we've always been scrambling around in the market in the final weeks, and that hasn't helped
We're a bit more settled now though, so hopefully it'll be better
From the sounds of it, Leeds have had most of their players available during their pre-season preparations. They clearly have an advantage here. Though the one thing in our favour compared to last season's opener against Palace is that Old Trafford will be absolutely bouncing, even though it's an early kick off. A year and a half since most of us were last there. Hopefully counts for something.
I dunno, I see Luke Shaws lunch order and I'm thinking the damage the fecker could do in just a couple of weeks could be huge.
Moment on the lips en all.
Moment on the lips en all.
Because we remember the start of last season?
And in those pre-season game they had a lot of disruptive injuries to their CBs. Every team has their problems.
It's hardly bizarre when Ole cited it himself last season as a major problem.
Most of our best players are going into the season with a similar amount of practice.
Most of our best players are going into the season with a similar amount of practice.
As the guy that posted if we would be ready for the Leeds game I respectfully disagree with the post. We were not ready last season and it cost us points. Pogba has only recently returned to training and also I think his mind is elsewhere. The point is that Leeds base their game on pace and fitness plus not many of their players have been on international duty. To have the concern about being ‘undercooked’ is logical and if you have played sport at any level, you would know that training is nothing like a match which also has the mental pressures to cope with that aren’t there in training. Leeds will fancy their chances for sure.
The Euros finished a month ago, it can not be described as a pre season as the OP bizarrely does. The fitness of our players involved in the Euros will depend on what they've been doing for the past few weeks. If they've been resting, drinking and eating unhealthily then they won't be match fit at all.
This team look unfit and rusty as hell..
Knew it
Knew it
I've never understood how footballers can get so out of form during the off season for the game they spend their entire lives playing/training for.
I get the concern in theory, but yesterday against Everton the players who looked sharpest to me were Maguire, Shaw and Fred, who all presumably have been fairly late returnees. Hopefully, that is a good sign.
Any concerns were put to bed yesterday, the last half hour was basically a training session for us.
The team that started yesterday I would expect that to be the line up for the first few games whilst bedding in other players
The team that started yesterday I would expect that to be the line up for the first few games whilst bedding in other players
Was at the game yesterday and what stood out the most to me was how much sharper than Everton we were.
Mason was buzzing around, Bruno was constant, Shaw picked up right where he left off with England, Maguire was dominant
I think we're in good shape
We'll need the likes of Mason, matic, and Mata (maybe lingard) who have had full preseasons to play their part while the others get up to speed but I was generally encouraged - the only player who looked a little off was pogba but he's always needed time to find his rhythm and he only played 45 mins plus we've decent cover for him now
Mason was buzzing around, Bruno was constant, Shaw picked up right where he left off with England, Maguire was dominant
I think we're in good shape
We'll need the likes of Mason, matic, and Mata (maybe lingard) who have had full preseasons to play their part while the others get up to speed but I was generally encouraged - the only player who looked a little off was pogba but he's always needed time to find his rhythm and he only played 45 mins plus we've decent cover for him now
This is my take on it too. Amongst the top clubs in the league I think we are actually in a bit of a paradoxically strong position to start the season well with a second string who either didn’t make it to internationals over the summer or went out early. Players like Wan Bissaka, Greenwood, Martial, Matic and Van De Beek, James, McTominay, Mata, Henderson, De Gea.
That’s a core side of players who we can hopefully get up to peak condition for the start of the season and use to ensure our best players are given rest and brought back to speed at the right pace. If it pays off, we should be able to pick up the necessary points and have our best players in and up to fitness before the tough matches come thick and fast. Then we should see the benefits of those players having a rest at the tail end of the season.
Also, remember our only pre-season game last year, against Aston Villa? That did not look like yesterday, to put it mildly.
TBF it's pretty clear he broke out a bit of the hyperbole there.
Like the guy/gal above said, except for the guys who were at the Olympics, it's been a month. It does feel like 'but the Euros were just ten days ago.'This team look unfit and rusty as hell..
Knew it
Most of the people expressing concerns about match fitness seem to be focusing on the guys who went to the Euros/Copa America and not the ones who played in the Olympics/Gold Cup.
It's not that they fall off a cliff; they lose that extra bit of edge that - when compared to someone who still has that edge - can be just as bad as falling off a cliff. It's why even the best musicians in the world still practice three, four hours a day every single day.
Yes well, but it didn't look that way yesterday. The players showing most of an edge were generally Euro and CA returnees.
Maybe we've stumbled onto the prime date interval to maximize rest while retaining performance level.
Starting next year, send everyone to a two-week tournament of any kind that ends thirty to thirty three days before the opening fixture of the season.
It strikes me that the returnees who looked sharpest (Maguire, Shaw, Fred) all reached the final stage of their tournaments. Maybe there's some sweet spot there. Or maybe it'll all go to crap once the action starts, who knows.
That's exactly what's happened.
It was just a moan about Sancho taking his sweet time which the OP has turned into "why is everyone panicking about pre season?"
Whole premise of the thread is an invention.
Good point.
Hopefully the club tests this totally ironclad theory out next summer by signing everyone up for various heretofore unknown tournaments.
And TBF, the bolded guy is looking like he's not going to have a single bad game for the next decade.
Stupid thread will look stupid if we lose to Leeds looking lethargic.
Preseason is there to get you fit and match fit. It's the entire point of preseason. If you don't have a preseason, it's very valid to be worried about the beginning of your season and the knock on effect to the season as a whole.
Preseason is there to get you fit and match fit. It's the entire point of preseason. If you don't have a preseason, it's very valid to be worried about the beginning of your season and the knock on effect to the season as a whole.
There's no theory, it's just an observation.
This is actually funny, last year it was used as excuse shield, now it doesnt matter cuz its being used as shield to protect a player, coaching stuff etc. you actually cant make this shit up.
Didn't SAF used to say that preseason wasn't about getting to top fitness, you needed top fitness at the end of the campaign or something like that?
The key difference to last year is they’ve had longer in training (5 days last year…) which was far less than our competitors and more importantly - it isn’t the entire squad that is impacted just a few individuals - but the idea you can be at peak fitness which has taken a season to build up - go on holiday for 3 weeks - and return in exactly the same condition because you went on the bike a few times is a bit silly.
Another key difference to last year is Paul Pogba hadn’t recovered from COVID and was clearly still struggling physically. We stuck him CM alongside Matic…we had no legs in the engine room. That won’t be happening this year.
Another key difference to last year is Paul Pogba hadn’t recovered from COVID and was clearly still struggling physically. We stuck him CM alongside Matic…we had no legs in the engine room. That won’t be happening this year.
That was true for the earlier years, but once Abramovich/Mourinho came along it was really required to be going strong right from the start. There's still some truth to obviously wanting your absolute peak to be towards the end, but teams can't really afford to get off to slow starts like we could get away with sometimes in the first decade of the league.
There are some major differences between this year and last:
- Shorter rest, and for the whole team, not just those who played with national teams in a big tournament
- Affected United worse than everyone else, except City
- Much more intensive match program, with less opportunity to remedy things in training sessions after the season began
In my opinion, the effect of that was obvious and real, not "an excuse shield". City struggled early on too, as did Wolves and Chelsea, who were also in Europe after the PL season ended.
I don't think you normally see a similar effect in years that have Euro or WC tournaments, which after all is every second year, so it's not as if it's a huge hypothetical. But we'll see how it works out this year.