Were our first 5 games our "pre-season"?

horsechoker

The Caf's Ezza.
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We began this season quite poorly, 2 losses, 1 league win and 2 league cup wins.

Since we've returned we've won 2 and drawn 1, having played 2 very good teams.

Can our early season form be purely attributed to not having a pre-season and was there anything we should've done different?

The way I look at it is that we've sacrificed a small part of our season but not trying to squeeze in a pre-season. It's only now that we look like a team that wouldn't lose 6-1 to Spurs.
 
horsechoker said:
We began this season quite poorly, 2 losses, 1 league win and 2 league cup wins.

Since we've returned we've won 2 and drawn 1, having played 2 very good teams.

Can our early season form be purely attributed to not having a pre-season and was there anything we should've done different?

The way I look at it is that we've sacrificed a small part of our season but not trying to squeeze in a pre-season. It's only now that we look like a team that wouldn't lose 6-1 to Spurs.
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we're not gonna know for another 3-5 games. I do think there is an element of that to it because a lot of the teams that got to the later stages of the European cup competitions performed badly in their first few games - Ole even referenced PSG themselves losing their first two games of the season. If we can get results against Leipzig, Arsenal, Istanbul and Everton then you've gotta say probably, yes.
 
Lack of preseason is certainly a big factor in our early poor form. Anyone who suggests otherwise is an idiot, pure and simple.
 
horsechoker said:
We began this season quite poorly, 2 losses, 1 league win and 2 league cup wins.

Since we've returned we've won 2 and drawn 1, having played 2 very good teams.

Can our early season form be purely attributed to not having a pre-season and was there anything we should've done different?

The way I look at it is that we've sacrificed a small part of our season but not trying to squeeze in a pre-season. It's only now that we look like a team that wouldn't lose 6-1 to Spurs.
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Of course the lack of preseason was a huge factor, and the amount of people not taking that into account really did show how little it's worth listening to most fans and commentators these days. Almost every team that continued to play in europe at the end of last season started this season poorly, but people just ignored that and pretended it was something unique to us and nothing to do with the preseason issue. Idiots.

In saying that, Ole didn't help himself by some of his line-ups. He himself has now said he shouldn't have started Pogba in the first few games as it was unfair to expect him to perform when he was even further behind everyone else since he had coronavirus. Something that really should have been obvious to him, even more than it should have been obvious to some of the over-the-top criticism Pogba received. He blatantly should never have been starting those games.
 
Fitness (or lack thereof) definitely played a part, but we can’t give it that much significance. Like Maddogg says above - there were plenty of tactical faults with our start.
 
horsechoker said:
Now the question is, was it even possible for us to have a pre-season?
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Probably not. The players having no rest would probably have hit us even harder further into the season.

It is what it is at the end of the day. Crying about it won’t change anything, although that won’t stop the mard arses on here.
 
MadDogg said:
Of course the lack of preseason was a huge factor, and the amount of people not taking that into account really did show how little it's worth listening to most fans and commentators these days. Almost every team that continued to play in europe at the end of last season started this season poorly, but people just ignored that and pretended it was something unique to us and nothing to do with the preseason issue. Idiots.

In saying that, Ole didn't help himself by some of his line-ups. He himself has now said he shouldn't have started Pogba in the first few games as it was unfair to expect him to perform when he was even further behind everyone else since he had coronavirus. Something that really should have been obvious to him, even more than it should have been obvious to some of the over-the-top criticism Pogba received. He blatantly should never have been starting those games.
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I agree, Ole has made some questionable decisions, even yesterday playing James when he's been in bad form for nearly a year was a mistake.
 
I must say I’m a little impressed by the players and leaders. Just a few games ago nothing worked at all. The Tottenham game was probably the worst I’ve seen and I thought it would take at least 7-10 matches to get back in business. But now it has worked well to very well for three matches in a row. There is still a long way to go but a lot has happened in a very short time.
 
DWelbz19 said:
Fitness (or lack thereof) definitely played a part, but we can’t give it that much significance. Like Maddogg says above - there were plenty of tactical faults with our start.
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Considering every other EPL team that had as long a season as us are also off to a rocky start, I'd certainly give the theory some credibility.
 
Certainly a factor, but I believe if we went with the personnel we have seen of late, we'd have seen better results. I guess that's what pre-season is about, though - trying out combinations. Unfortunately, Ole didn't have the luxury to do so, but no team did.
 
I mean, we blatantly didn't lose to Palace and Spurs (6-1!) solely because we had a truncated pre-season, that should be obvious to anyone. Is it one of the factors? Yes, but then again isn't every team in the PL in a similar boat?
 
Zen86 said:
Lack of preseason is certainly a big factor in our early poor form. Anyone who suggests otherwise is an idiot, pure and simple.
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If only we had preseason, then we will blow teams away, winning all the games with 2-0 at least and running to win the title.
Guarantee.

Wonder why we didn't had any since this formula is so easy..
 
Gazza said:
I mean, we blatantly didn't lose to Palace and Spurs (6-1!) solely because we had a truncated pre-season, that should be obvious to anyone. Is it one of the factors? Yes, but then again isn't every team in the PL in a similar boat?
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No, most teams in the PL had a much longer pre-season then us. The ones that didn't have a pre-season (we had like a week and 1 sole game against Villa) were the ones that made it to the knockouts of the CL and the EL in August. Then the players had like 2 weeks off, 1 week pre-season and then it was our first match. In comparison most PL teams started pre-season a good few weeks before ours.

It's no surprise really - Pogba could barely run or control the ball in our opening games. Fitness is huge to playing 90 mins at the top level, he looks much sharper now.
 
No doubt in my mind it was the primary reason, clear to anybody watching those games we were totally off the pace.

No excuse for the Spurs result but I’m confident we were not up to speed in those initial games. Very frustrating.
 
Gazza said:
I mean, we blatantly didn't lose to Palace and Spurs (6-1!) solely because we had a truncated pre-season, that should be obvious to anyone. Is it one of the factors? Yes, but then again isn't every team in the PL in a similar boat?
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To be fair City are in the exact same boat and Wolves haven't set the world alight either, all 3 of us had little to no preseason. Having Pogba and Matic were a huge reason we were so shit at the start of the season, it's no coincidence that since they've been taken out of the team we've looked more cohesive and less leaky, not because they're bad players but because they were literal statues who just let teams waltz through us with no resistance.

I also don't think it helped having only 1 of our 5 summer signings be available for the first few games either, that's down to poor time management over the summer, had we got them in sooner we'd have been able to have them ready for the season and they might have been the difference makers in some of the earlier fixtures. Maguire getting arrested and Greenwood getting sent home from the England camp was bad from our perspective too, because those games could've been used to build some vital match sharpness.
Web of Bissaka said:
If only we had preseason, then we will blow teams away, winning all the games with 2-0 at least and running to win the title.
Guarantee.

Wonder why we didn't had any since this formula is so easy..
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That's obviously not what he meant but it's undeniably a factor, at top level sport even the most minute details can swing a game in someone's favour, missing a whole pre-season was always going to be catastrophic.
 
This is the third season in a row we’ve started the season like a bunch of bell ends. Going further back in both van Gaal and Mourinhos first season we also started badly.
It’s just something we continually do....
 
I was watching the Spurs “All or Nothing” documentary earlier, their club doctor said even a week without training would have a significant impact on the fitness of an elite level athlete.

We had players coming off the beach with a week back in training and yet pundits and fans wondered why we lacked intensity
 
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