greydos

Well that fell flat!

What on earth did Hurley do to you that you took out a restraining order?! I personally would have let her carry on!!

Yeah strikers didn’t need to press as centre backs were going to hoof it. Or give a pass to the full back to play a channel ball. I still doubt the idea that football requires more now. All the off the pitch advancements have extended longevity in most other sports despite performance levels increasing there also. F1 cars have more downforce than years ago. Alonso and Hamilton are racing into their 40s. Tennis players are stronger. Federer, Djokovic, Nadal have gone on longer. More cricket is played than years ago. The England cricket team’s getting older. Anderson, Broad played late, etc. I’m just not sure I buy that because striker’s press a bit more the game’s harder overall. It just changes the balance of off ball running. If attack and wide midfielders are pressing more, defenders are in fewer battles than before and so resting more.

Training, nutrition, sports science, sleep science etc have moved on also. Are you suggesting that the gap between the exertion required to play 90 minutes has grown more than the loads placed on players on training and their ability to train for that exertion? Why is that not the case in other sports? Runners still run a normal marathon distance. Tennis players still play the same amount of sets and matches. Cricketers play more cricket. Are there more sprints in football now compared with 1990s? Longer distances run? Arguably, with 4-4-2 hoofball being pervasive in the 1990s more stamina was required as it was a game mostly full of length of the pitch transitions. This idea football has “moved on” seems easy to say but difficult to prove.

In my day playing 90 minutes each week wasn’t “flogging” but desired as being a normal footballer.

If the market forces a player sale that’s just football. If contrived premier league elitist rules force the sale that’s a disgrace!

He was always fit as a fiddle under Bruce. Perhaps 2-day training weeks are best after all!

Zinchenko for me.

Eddie is my King. Lewis is my left back. That is all.

Sir Eddie doesn’t believe in playing possession football for possession’s sake. I think that’s where he has to adapt going forward. Well coached possession football reduces the amount of high intensity reactive running a team has to do. It means matches are played at our intensity and not the opposition’s intensity. If games are played at your intensity, and you train for that intensity, you’re less likely to suffer injuries. it’s like in rugby where teams play France trying to keep the ball on the park to tire their massive forwards. Their forwards don’t train for high ball in time play, so they get tired and need replacing or risk getting injured. We need to control games so they’re played on our terms. Then we can conserve energy against minnows rather than go toe-to-toe to the death with Luton and the likes!

The worst thing for me about losing to Man Scott is not the difference in quality but core body strength. Whenever there’s duels for the ball or a battle to get it under they always our strength us and come out with it. Watching Dan Burn running with Foden and struggling to knock him over shoulder to shoulder, or watching Bruno lose out to Kovacic or Willock lose out to Silva. I can take teams having more technical quality than us. But not team should be physically stronger than us. We should be bossing duels.

I think this season will be the absolute making of Eddie Howe and of us. He’ll have gone into the season believing in his methods but with question marks about whether they would work actually at the top level. He’s now been fully tested and will have learnt loss about where he needs to improve and what the team needs to succeed. I’ve no doubt he’ll learn his lessons and implement them over the summer. I expect next year we’ll be comfortably top 6, the style will have developed a little, as will his use of the squad, and our squad composition will be almost bomb proof. i just feel sorry for his wife and kids who absolutely won’t see him for the holidays!

Jimmy Anderson! (Broken back in first 2 years, ever-present the rest)

I agree overall, but I don’t see us as weaker than Manure’s lot.

I just want to finish above Manure for one season in my life! Let’s just break that duck at least as a consolation