What is it with everyone these days going on about this magical pre season. Jairo joined us in October, he's had 5 or 6 months to get fully fit yet can still only do 60 mins. That points to underlying fitness problems, I reckon 4 weeks pre season training would make no difference.
Spot on. He’s a great example of mixed up thinking. Many acknowledge him as our “best player” and yet most also agree that he’s physically blown at 60 minutes. The two things may be currently true for our shambolic lot, but they would contradict each other in any high performing team.
The team falls off a cliff mid way through the second half of every match, in large part because we simply run out of energy. Midfield is a particular problem in this respect, and goes missing in the last 20 mins of almost every match, contributing hugely to wider systemic problems. Riedewald, skilful and calm as he is, is a major part of that problem.
If we aspire to promotion, we need players that can go for 90 mins plus without issues, enabling substitutions to be based on gaining tactical advantages, rather than plugging gaps created by knackered players. Riedewald, Hamer, Rothwell, Campbell could never be part of that scenario, and they clearly aren’t players who can be whipped into top shape in a preseason at this stage in their careers. Sure we could carry one or two of them in our squad if their brilliance was worth the downside, but we have too many who present the downside every week, and the upside only occasionally. Unless we can compete physically across the team for 90 mins of every match next season, we are going nowhere. That needs to be the focus of our summer recruitment. And I don’t just mean players who can run around a lot - I mean players who can do that as well as being good enough to win football matches. We see plenty of those in opposition teams - it’s time we had a few more.
