Why Tottenham have reason to fear World Cup fatigue

[mawspurs]

Gareth Southgate’s phone will have been ringing off the hook for the past few days with messages of congratulations, but also a few of concern from Premier League managers.

Mentally drained and physically depleted, England’s 23-man squad are amongst the 107 Premier League footballers returning from the World Cup, and being plunged back into their club structure.

Source: Telegraph

 

[davidmatzdorf]

This seems the most interesting bit of that article:

A study by the Football Research Group after the 2002 World Cup concluded that the likelihood of injury during the season increased when pre-season training was lighter. On top of this, rugby union and Australian Rules Football have concluded there is a sweet spot for the amount of training needed, individually and collectively, to prevent injuries during the season. Less training equals more injury risk, and this is compounded where the team has a new manager and a squad returning at different times.

And this follows directly on from it:

Spurs and Manchester City, who have had the highest number of players in the semi-finals, seem the clubs at most risk of a very disrupted August and September, and potentially corrosive impact on the season. This is particularly true for Spurs: stripped of many of their stars for their lucrative pre-season tours, they need to move stadium and also manage four games in three weeks, before the next international break, with a much shallower squad than their other rivals.

 

[whitesocks]

But why would a player's pre-season training be lighter? For me, that is the main reason they might get more injuries later on, not the lighter training itself.

ie training would be lighter if they are still tired and carrying injuries from the previous season/internationals.
Maybe they were recovering from surgery that summer.
Maybe they missed some pre-season because of a late transfer, and are just not used to the higher physical demands of the new club, or a new position. A full pre-season can only help so much.

I don't really expect any of the 10 (?) to get back to their best until November at best. It is going to be really tough, and we can only hope that the same coaching that has got these players to the end stages of the WC has also got the reserve players to a good level. This is their chance to shine.

 

[davidmatzdorf]

If Mourinho can compel himself to loosen the shackles a bit and let his team play, this autumn is a great opportunity for Man Utd to get a head start on the rest of the league. The three best squads in the league are clearly the two Manchester sides and ours, by a margin. Liverpool have the best attack, but they still haven't sorted out control of the rest of the park.

Man City have the depth to cover for exhaustion and fitness issues. But to a lesser extent so do we, especially if we pick up a couple of starting-calibre players between now and mid-August.

It's not possible to anticipate whose training methods will be the best fit and the most adaptable to the varying needs of players who have been at the WC and players who have been on holiday. Guardiola and Pochettino both work with top-class conditioning coaches. Similarly Klopp and Mourinho. Chelsea are an unknown quantity. I guess we'll just have to wait and see...

 

[double0]

The one thing in our favour is the style of possession football we play, it allows control especially against teams below top 6.

Arsenal should be flying as they had nobody, Ozil apart.

 

[14/04/91]

I'm reading the latest Secret Footballer book "What the Physio saw" and he is adamant that 'winter month' muscle injuries are hugely linked to a poor/disrupted pre-season.