Douglas Higginbottom wrote:Michael Brookes wrote:Maybe training indoors?
They have all sorts of indoor gym type facilities at Carrington but not an indoor pitch. No doubt at all it will have to do with the 120 minutes at Stoke but it's still a surprise to me that some work wasn't done at all , even if just tactical with such a big match tomorrow. Deep into a season a balance has to be made between playing and training because the basic match fitness should already be there. However there is no doubt that overall the training sine Mancini arrived has been much less intense and onerous.
Hello Douglas! Just for reference, I am an American, and as such, have not had an opportunity to visit Manchester as of yet, although I do intend to later this year. One thing I noticed in my recent trip to London, is that space is at a premium. There's hardly room for a lemonade stand, much less an indoor facility for footie. (Indeed, while I was there, I wondered where everyone plays football in the Winter, considering that England is such a football crazy nation. Surely not outdoors!) Is Manchester (or Carrington) much the same way, and thus why there is no indoor facility? It baffles me that a Premiership club doesn't have such an indoor pitch. Even here in the states, in the small city that I live, there are four indoor fields for recreational players.
On a different aspect of your post.. I somewhat agree with the sentiment that having an extended training session the day before a game at Chelsea, is not a good idea, especially given the extra time game vs Stoke. It's not a good idea for those that actually played in that game, but it is absolutely necessary (IMO) for those who didn't play, and haven't had regular minutes throughout the season.
For those of you who have played football (or any sport) competitively on any level.. I bet you know that keeping match fitness is a tenuous thing, because to simplify: too little leads to sluggishness during a match, as does overtraining. And with football in particular, trying to keep match fitness, if one is not playing regularly (or at all) is not possible just by running on a treadmill, or going for long jogs. Perhaps a better training method is doing interval sprints mixed with endurance runs, agility drills and whatever ball-skill drills, for minimum. But all-in-all, nothing beats playing in a match, or match-like situation (e.g. 11 v 11, or 8 v 8 scrimmage that actually lasts for a good 45 minutes minimum).
So given the above, I have no idea how Mancini expects this team to keep up the pace and intensity (with regards to physical play) for the rest of the season, unless somehow, every player on the squad who gets minutes is self-disciplined to the point that they keep match-fit outside of practice? Somehow, I doubt this is the case. Unless I am missing some other piece(s) of information, I think we will fizzle towards the end of this season.
And concerning RSC; I was against bringing him in. I really thought that we should have kept Boj, or Big Frank, as crazy as that sounded. But now that we have RSC, and we see that he has the agility of a boulder on the field, and has been injured more often than not, I am beginning to question why he has been brought to the first-team. It's not that he doesn't have the ability, as he has proven in the past with his time at Blackburn. I think his main problems stem from the fact that his form, including his prediliction towards niggling injuries, is more closely tied to his fitness level than most players. He is not doing any good in his "sedentary" spot with the first-team, since he is not getting many match minutes, nor is he going to get much fitness training from a Mancini style practice. This in turn is preventing him from becoming fit and injury-free. So why not send him to the reserves for the rest of the year, or just have loaned him out earlier?