United Arab Emarite wrote:

dufc2019 wrote:

any chance our captain can take a bit of time off the drink to actually let his body heal ?

That's not nice, be careful what you repeat.
 

not if its true its not
 

I think it's worth commenting on the "fitness issues".

Most of the players against Falkirk looked bagged and looked like they were dragging pianos behind them.

We are at the end of 4 weeks of preseason training. There's a simple relationship between fitness and level of performance, which is basically "performance = fitness - tiredness".

The more you train, the fitter you get and the more tired you get. As a result, the level of performance during a preseason period does not appear to improve because tiredness remains high.

The key is when you stop training / ease off training, fitness starts to drop but tiredness drops much faster. Therefore the level of performance gets significantly better. This is why teams have periodisation training plans which look very different for regular season versus preseason and can look very different even week-to-week.

Falkirk may have done less preseason training than us, but they won't be fitter than us. They are probably less fit, but also much less tired, and so had a higher level of performance. Goodwin and the coaching staff probably figure there's more to be gained from maintaining high intensity training right through until a week or so before our first league game, and I'd have to agree with them. We didn't ease off training before Falkirk, and we probably won't ease off much before the other group stage games either - but our level of performance should still be high enough to get us through the group.

Last year during these group stages we were less fit, just as tired, less organised and had a squad of generally lower quality. The end result looked the same - shite - but shite for different reasons. I'm much less concerned this year.

That said, we'd better get a result tomorrow!

United Arab Emarite wrote:

P = F  minus T. That's rather interesting CA.
So on Saturday we not so much lacked fitness as were just plain 'tired'.
I suppose elite athletes know all about that.
And elite football clubs round the world who have a coaching staff of dozens have that sorted.
Might a dook at the West Sands after training to reap the benefits of cold water swimming help us do you think?
It's all the rage & we wouldn't have to invest in ice baths.
 

You sound a bit sceptical, UAE.

It's not that elite clubs have figured this out but we haven't. Goodwin and his staff will be well aware of this stuff. My point was that Goodwin will have made the decision that there was more to be gained in the long run by working hard right up until that Falkirk game and not scaling back training for a few days just to increase our performance level against Falkirk. It wasn't a mistake or lack of knowledge - it was a choice, and FWIW, one I agree with.

The players tonight looked much sharper. It's only 3 days since we played Falkirk. We didn't look sharper because we did a ton more training over the past 2-3 days and are now fitter. In fact, due to the closeness of the games, training will have eased off since Saturday. Probably a light session on Sunday, or maybe even the day off, a double session on Monday with a focus on shape and ball movement rather than hard running, and a light session on Tuesday morning. As a result, we are not fitter, but we are less tired (or fatigued, if you prefer), and so the performance level was higher tonight.