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The glorious march to CL qualification

In fact Wanyama missed the first month of the season through injury and Lamela and Winks didn't play at Saudi Sportswashing Machine (both played the following week v Fulham) so would have been Luke Amos or Oliver Skipp in that XI. At that point Foyth hadn't started a PL game and Sissoko was thought of in the same bracket as Jason dozzell.

In a usual pre-season players would have 4-6 weeks break and then come back in first week of July and then have 6 weeks before playing first competitive game of the season. In 2018 of those involved in the world cup:
Sonny (final game was) 27th June (then had the clusterfudge of the asian games to contend with)
Eriksen 1st July
Sanchez 3rd July
All england/Belgium/france players - 14 July

I know that the Euro's or World CUp take place every other year but you can't legislate for so many players to be involved for so long especially in a summer when the PL started again on 11 August. I guess this is now just another challenge for club coaches to manage.

If we had kept the world cup players back you then would have a situation where we had two sets of players at very different levels of fitness and conditioning - again I'm guessing but it might have taken 6 weeks to calibrate both sets of players training regimes. Poch might conceibavly have decided this was the best option for the greater good of each invidiual player's season-long condition but it would have had an almighty effect on the results in the first half of the season where traditionally is where we drop a lot of points and find ourselves playing catch up.

It was always going to be an absolute clusterfudge of a season for this reason alone so I can fully understand why the top 4 finish has ended up being such an endurance.
 
Bedfordspurs said:
Ok... a kid and a left back playing out of position (although they have played together once I believe as CBS)

I like your logic but it just wouldn’t work in this league
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I think this season has shown that most of the teams in this league are brick, yes it's a kid and a player who is best at LB, but Davies has played many many times as a CB, mostly very well, and it's two players with the preparation of our coaching and physical therapy system schemed by Poch, which puts as at a massive advantage in 90% of our games.

I think Poch tries to get the squad to peak as one, where I feel a better system would be to have groups of players alternating throughout the season. Obviously our injuries this year would have fudged us anyway but that doesn't mean a different approach is invalid.
 
I really like GRPD’s theory, and think it is probably correct.

Usually under Poch we are better in the second half of the season rather than the first, but this year circumstances clearly required some change and I think it’s great that we have a coach that is adaptable enough to alter his standard approach when he recognises that there is too much different to the usual ideal.

If we didn’t have so many injuries, we would have been able to rotate a lot more, but we are where we are. If we kept the WC players back, let them ‘recover’ and then put them through a pre-season during the season, we then struggle with players that probably weren’t in as good condition, that usually take a bit of time to ramp up, and who wouldn’t have usually been our first choice. And we may then have had a better end to the year, but we probably would have had a heck of a lot of ground to catch up and may have left it too late.

It’s interesting to see how different Managers handled it. Klopp had the luxury of leaving Fabinho out completely and then benching Henderson for a number of weeks in the early months, but last night they are both pressing Barca and winning tackles right into the 94th minute. Poch just hasn’t had the same luxury.

And when you think about it, there was that point where everything seemed to click, that Everton game. We had the top players back, rested in form. We had the squad players in form having had enough game time due to the earlier season. It was the perfect moment before the first choice players started breaking down and before injuries hit. And now we are where we are.

I don’t think any Manager intends to throw away games early or late in the season, but they definitely do plan on when they want to peak and give themselves the best possible chance. What Poch has done this season has been outstanding, to adapt given the seriously tough circumstances he has had to deal with.
 
galeforce said:
I think this season has shown that most of the teams in this league are brick, yes it's a kid and a player who is best at LB, but Davies has played many many times as a CB, mostly very well, and it's two players with the preparation of our coaching and physical therapy system schemed by Poch, which puts as at a massive advantage in 90% of our games.

I think Poch tries to get the squad to peak as one, where I feel a better system would be to have groups of players alternating throughout the season. Obviously our injuries this year would have fudged us anyway but that doesn't mean a different approach is invalid.
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I find the concept of managing players' peaking very interesting. Most managers tend to share it around - e.g. 1/3 up, 1/3 medium, 1/3 down - at any one time. Ramos famously synced the whole squad to be up for the League Cup final, and we all saw what happened when they all came down in unison.

I'm not sure Poch has done anything different this season - it's just that most of our squad haven't had enough down time over the past 3 years because of international commitments over the summer.
 
Gutter Boy said:
I find the concept of managing players' peaking very interesting. Most managers tend to share it around - e.g. 1/3 up, 1/3 medium, 1/3 down - at any one time. Ramos famously synced the whole squad to be up for the League Cup final, and we all saw what happened when they all came down in unison.

I'm not sure Poch has done anything different this season - it's just that most of our squad haven't had enough down time over the past 3 years because of international commitments over the summer.
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This season it's certainly hard to judge, I'm basing it on previous seasons and the way everyone was thrown back in after the WC.
 
galeforce said:
Exactly
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BrainOfLevy said:
I really like GRPD’s theory, and think it is probably correct.

Usually under Poch we are better in the second half of the season rather than the first, but this year circumstances clearly required some change and I think it’s great that we have a coach that is adaptable enough to alter his standard approach when he recognises that there is too much different to the usual ideal.

If we didn’t have so many injuries, we would have been able to rotate a lot more, but we are where we are. If we kept the WC players back, let them ‘recover’ and then put them through a pre-season during the season, we then struggle with players that probably weren’t in as good condition, that usually take a bit of time to ramp up, and who wouldn’t have usually been our first choice. And we may then have had a better end to the year, but we probably would have had a heck of a lot of ground to catch up and may have left it too late.

It’s interesting to see how different Managers handled it. Klopp had the luxury of leaving Fabinho out completely and then benching Henderson for a number of weeks in the early months, but last night they are both pressing Barca and winning tackles right into the 94th minute. Poch just hasn’t had the same luxury.

And when you think about it, there was that point where everything seemed to click, that Everton game. We had the top players back, rested in form. We had the squad players in form having had enough game time due to the earlier season. It was the perfect moment before the first choice players started breaking down and before injuries hit. And now we are where we are.

I don’t think any Manager intends to throw away games early or late in the season, but they definitely do plan on when they want to peak and give themselves the best possible chance. What Poch has done this season has been outstanding, to adapt given the seriously tough circumstances he has had to deal with.
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This.

If you're looking for minutia that 5 week period from 24th Nov (Chelsea) - 26 dec (Bounrmeouth) was where we hit peak this season (bar the 2-4 defeat at Woolwich). It included the wins over Chelsea, Inter, So'ton, Leicester, Burnley, Woolwich in cup and the 6-2 at Everton plus 5-0 over Bournemouth - in addition to the draw in Nou Camp.

This was the period that Kane, dele, Son and Eriksen were all fit and available (though were rested even during that period). If you remember dele got injured v everton and then missed Bournemouth but returned for Wolves but never really looked right before getting injured v Fulham in Jan.
 
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Bedfordspurs said:
We have won 4 more games so far than the year Leicester won the league

We have set a club record for wins and the reason we are where we are is because we won games

The game is about trying to win and yeah we have lost games but we have won more than most sides too
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I agree too much is made of the games we have lost this season, we have lost a lot of those games trying to win them, we are not a let's nick a point team, you might say we should be more pragmatic but look at the points City and Liverpool have, nicking 6 draws would not have made much difference to where we finished.
 
K.D.D.D.D.Soc said:
I agree too much is made of the games we have lost this season, we have lost a lot of those games trying to win them, we are not a let's nick a point team, you might say we should be more pragmatic but look at the points City and Liverpool have, nicking 6 draws would not have made much difference to where we finished.
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we lost a few which were already won though
 
K.D.D.D.D.Soc said:
I agree too much is made of the games we have lost this season, we have lost a lot of those games trying to win them, we are not a let's nick a point team, you might say we should be more pragmatic but look at the points City and Liverpool have, nicking 6 draws would not have made much difference to where we finished.
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I think all this 'we were going for the win' stuff is a bit of a cover up, we have simply been pretty poor defensively and let in a lot of sloppy goals that have lost us games that we shouldnt have - they havent occurred because we've had most of the team charging up the pitch trying to get a winner - simply sloppy defensive mistakes on a lot of occassions....
 
harr1984 said:
I think all this 'we were going for the win' stuff is a bit of a cover up, we have simply been pretty poor defensively and let in a lot of sloppy goals that have lost us games that we shouldnt have - they havent occurred because we've had most of the team charging up the pitch trying to get a winner - simply sloppy defensive mistakes on a lot of occassions....
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It's all related - Dier and Alder's bookings against Bournemouth were the result of us overstretching going forwards, pushing for a goal.

Defending is about probabilities. The less risky bits of defending you expose yourself too, the less mistakes get made
 
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harr1984 said:
I think all this 'we were going for the win' stuff is a bit of a cover up, we have simply been pretty poor defensively and let in a lot of sloppy goals that have lost us games that we shouldnt have - they havent occurred because we've had most of the team charging up the pitch trying to get a winner - simply sloppy defensive mistakes on a lot of occassions....
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That sloppy defending could have been reduced by us setting up 4 or 5 players in front of the back line and leaving 1 up front, but that's not what I pay to see.
 
GPRD81 said:
This.

If you're looking for minutia that 5 week period from 24th Nov (Chelsea) - 26 dec (Bounrmeouth) was where we hit peak this season (bar the 2-4 defeat at Woolwich). It included the wins over Inter, Leicester, Burnley, Woolwich in cup and the 6-2 at Everton - in addition to the draw in Nou Camp.

This was the period that Kane, dele, Son and Eriksen were all fit and available (though were rested even during that period). If you remember dele got injured v everton and then missed Bournemouth but returned for Wolves but never really looked right before getting injured v Fulham in Jan.
Click to expand...

That’s a really good point about the Leceister away game. I remember thinking it was a proper Poch-Spurs-clicking into gear performance. They are a good side, whether under Puel or Rodgers, and we played them off the park.
 
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