Player fitness, rotation, training, etc.

I'm pretty sure Liverpool and spurs rotated heavily in the europa league last season.

 

In fact didn't Brendan put out weakend Liverpool teams in Liverpool's CL campaign couple of seasons back including away at Real?

Yes and I would understand that but since our exit from the Europa league Puel has rotated heavily between league games..someone else said we had a league team and a Europa league team, well I would say at the moment we have no such thing. 6 changes between league games just means we are playing a weakened side every game and getting the results that that sort of rotation deserves.

The teams we lost to were poor...Everton, palace, hull, wha etc

If he was playing the strongest team each week in the league with a few tweaks then wholesale changes in the cups I would understand.

Didn't Les look at the fixtures before appointing Puel? Apart from possibly 2 extra LC games (if we had lost in the 3rd round) there have been no unexpected games this season.If Les expected Puel to have to do a lot of coaching for his new method then he was a bit of a **** appointing him knowing the fixture congestion we have. This "no time for coaching" stuff is just a lame excuse for our poor play and results.

If there's 'no time for coaching' then all the more reason to take every opportunity to keep the better players together as often as possible.

VVD plays again. Rest of team rotated as they are tired

On the bench for an away match at a distant club is not a complete rest.

Has Delli Alli played in pretty much every champions league game and a part in every league game for Spurs? He definately played the three games over Christmas. He also scored 6 goals in those three games. Spurs also play a much higher tempo than us and press for the best part of 90 minutes.

Despite their players being much fitter than our team (therefore working harder outside of the games themselves) and playing as many games ...lots of Spurs players have managed without the level of rotation we have had. AND they are still in touch with those two teams who aren't playing in Europe (Liverpool and Chelsea).

 

So some people may have a simplist view etc" but perhaps Its actually that some level of rotation is required but Puel has taken it to an extreme so we never actually get our strongest team on the pitch together anymore as he has decided to make 6 changes every game which perhaps is why our form has tailed off?

Precisely!! As I said on another thread certain players play all the time and some are rotated all the time. Puel can't have it both ways. Even with massive rotation we don't press or close down and therefore don't work as hard as Tottenham for instance.....

We are not fit enough.....

The point was that Spurs today are a product of two and a bit years with Pochettino, whereas we're at the beginning with Puel. Not sure how far that comparison stretches, given Pochettino had a major transformation job to do whereas Puel inherited a very good squad, but Reed hinted at youth policy by pointing out Kane was out on loan when Poch arrived. Perhaps the club sees Project Puel as a transformation of the sort Pochettino's made at Spurs, but that's not obvious from the outside.

 

The reference to deadwood was mine (highlighting the scale of Pochettino's challenge on arrival) not Reed's.

False comparison. Compare SFC at the end of MP's first half a season with CP's first half a season. Look specifically at fitness levels, the ability of those to adapt to the system and all those other figures that people like to look at to try to show something that they probably don't. The first two metrics (and the second can perhaps be shown by the third) should show enough.

To start things off here's the link to the Wiki page from the 21/01/13 when MP took over:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%9313_Southampton_F.C._season

This "no time for coaching" stuff is just a lame excuse for our poor play .

No it's not. Plenty of pundits have pointed out that Conte's hit the ground running compared to Pep ,because he's got all week to work on his system and drum it into the players. There is no way Chelsea's back 3 would function like it is if they played a midweek game every week. It's not the 1970's with a couple of laps round the pitch, a five a side game , then off for the day . Modern players are drilled , drilled and drilled again .

It's absolutely no coincidence that Liverpool's best season came when they didn't have European matches, are doing well now with no European matches and Leicester won the league with no European matches . Do you really think Leicester would have won the league had they been in the Europa league.

It is a fact that Puel hasn't had as much time on the training pitch as other managers. It's not even debatable .

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There is no way Chelsea's back 3 would function like it is if they played a midweek game every week. It's not the 1970's with a couple of laps round the pitch, a five a side game , then off for the day . Modern players are drilled , drilled and drilled again .

 

Chelsea won 2 trophies in each of 2010, 2012 and 2015 - all while playing in the champions league

Precisely!! As I said on another thread certain players play all the time and some are rotated all the time. Puel can't have it both ways. Even with massive rotation we don't press or close down and therefore don't work as hard as Tottenham for instance.....

 

We are not fit enough.....

Poch's teams have a habit of tailing off in the second half of the season though when all that pressing catches up with them fit or not they struggle to keep it up. I was the same in his full season here. Just look how spurs collapsed the end of last season.

I had no problem with squad rotation while we were in europa even at Christmas I could understand it a 3 games in 6 days.

I expect it to happen less now we are down to one game a week. In reality though Puel is ****ed up front while he only has Long or Jrod to pick from and he has CM full of players who are much of a muchness from an attacking point of view. Unless the club gets a proper attacking midfielder and a forward who knows were the back of the net is in Jan Puel has got a struggle on his hands.

Poch's teams have a habit of tailing off in the second half of the season though when all that pressing catches up with them fit or not they struggle to keep it up. I was the same in his full season here. Just look how spurs collapsed the end of last season.

 

I had no problem with squad rotation while we were in europa even at Christmas I could understand it a 3 games in 6 days.

 

I expect it to happen less now we are down to one game a week. In reality though Puel is ****ed up front while he only has Long or Jrod to pick from and he has CM full of players who are much of a muchness from an attacking point of view. Unless the club gets a proper attacking midfielder and a forward who knows were the back of the net is in Jan Puel has got a struggle on his hands.

We aren't! We've got eight games between 11 Jan and 11 Feb inclusive and if we beat Norwich that will go up to nine games. We don't really get down to one match a week until after the West Ham game on 4 Feb (and that assumes no more cup matches).

No it's not. Plenty of pundits have pointed out that Conte's hit the ground running compared to Pep ,because he's got all week to work on his system and drum it into the players. There is no way Chelsea's back 3 would function like it is if they played a midweek game every week. It's not the 1970's with a couple of laps round the pitch, a five a side game , then off for the day . Modern players are drilled , drilled and drilled again .

It is a lame excuse because it was known before the season started and Puel was appointed. The Conte situation is not comparable, Chelsea knew (and crucially understood) exactly what fixtures they had and realised that he had the time to coach his methods. But dear old Les brought in a coach that wanted to introduce different methods knowing full well that he would not have the time to do that coaching (allegedly). If this is genuinely the case (and I don't believe it anyway) it just shows poor judgement on Les' behalf. Is any one debating the fact Puel has not had as much time to coach as other managers? I'm certainly not, simply that it was known before the season started. If lack of coaching time was a serious factor then it was a mistake to bring someone in who needed to do that in a season when we knew we would not have that luxury. I don't believe it is/was such a critical factor and so using it now is just a lame excuse.

Tadic:

“For me personally, I don’t need a rest,” the playmaker said. “Physically I feel very well.

 

“After the injury on my nose I needed a little bit of time, but now I feel very well and I can play every three days.

 

“I think most of the players feel like that.

 

“You are really motivated and you want to show yourself [that you can play every three days].”

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/saints/news/15040194.Tadic__Puel_needs_to_play_his_best_team_at_Liverpool/?ref=mac

Interesting. Perhaps if Puel is convinced it can't be done he should prove it to some of the players by sending them out there!

I genuinely believe the incessant rotation is going to dramatically slow down now.

It was (hopefully) an experiment that Reed wanted (Puel hasn't shown the same appetite for 6-7 changes every game in previous roles)

Its cost us a genuine challenge for 6-7th this season + probably the Europe dream, but we still have the EFL cup and top 8 in the league still very much achievable.

1 change yesterday from the previous league game and we looked better (more connected) already

Some stats....

Looking at the starting line-ups for just our Premier League games....

Puel has "rotated" 2.7 players per game on average (57 changes over 21 games) over the course of the season thus far.

During the hectic December/January period, Puel "rotated" 5 players per game (35 changes over 7 games)

From the start of the season to just before the hectic December/January period, Puel "rotated" just 1.6 players per game on average (21 changes over 13 games)

Puel has "rotated" more than 4 players in only 4 games. We lost two and won two of those games.

Of course, all of the above stats include some enforced changes for injuries and suspensions, so the figures for actual "rotation" (out of choice rather than necessity) would be lower.

Well this is the part of the season that our rotation should start baring fruit , When every other club should be starting to tire we should still be flying ! (If it's worked that is)