red4ever 79
New Member
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.
They have had a pre season, a much more intensive one than they would have had they stayed at the club!
The notion that players like Sancho, Varane, Cavani, Pogba will be unable to play for several games baffles me. Yes they haven't played with their colleagues but so what? It's not a massive issue.
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.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.
And in those pre-season game they had a lot of disruptive injuries to their CBs. Every team has their problems.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.
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.There's an argument raging on RE Sancho about him not being back earlier and missing a few games (he won't, he'll get minutes v Leeds).
What I'm wondering though is why some posters are getting worked up about pre-season and seem to think the players that haven't had a full one at United will suddenly be unable to play football again or be majorly unfit.
The majority of the late arrivals have just played a huge covid enhanced season and straight through to major international tournaments (EC and Copa). During these tournaments they are pretty much 'on season' training, diet and match intensity. They have had a pre season, a much more intensive one than they would have had they stayed at the club!
The notion that players like Sancho, Varane, Cavani, Pogba will be unable to play for several games baffles me. Yes they haven't played with their colleagues but so what? It's not a massive issue. They'll be fit and ready to go. If anything the rest will have done then good physically and mentally.
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.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.
Also, remember our only pre-season game last year, against Aston Villa? That did not look like yesterday, to put it mildly.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
TBF it's pretty clear he broke out a bit of the hyperbole there....
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...
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.
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
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.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.
Yes well, but it didn't look that way yesterday. The players showing most of an edge were generally Euro and CA returnees.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.'
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.
Maybe we've stumbled onto the prime date interval to maximize rest while retaining performance level.Yes well, but it didn't look that way yesterday. The players showing most of an edge were generally Euro and CA returnees.
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.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.
That's exactly what's happened.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.
Good point.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.
There's no theory, it's just an observation.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.
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.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?
There are some major differences between this year and last: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.