The emphasis on toughness

[Yogi]

Whilst our emphasis on toughness on the pitch “winning headers, tackles and races” to quote the manager has served us well on the pitch has our reliance on our players resilience hurt us in a broader sense this year? What I mean by this is we’ve maintained a relatively small squad under wilder expecting players to play through niggles and come back from injury quickly and I think this has come home to roost this year.

For example we lost JOC for the season by bringing him back early at the end of last season, fleck has played through a broken back, baldock is currently playing/training through a hamstring problem. I personally think this has been a serious contributing factor to our issues this season and that perhaps one of the clubs takeaways from this season should be to run a larger squad now we have the finances to do so to protect the playing assets we have.

 

[Marcus Tullius Cicero]

Skill, the ability to do something well; expertise.

 

[Rodley]

There’s clearly been a drop off in terms of physical condition of players and physicality in terms of performance. What I don’t know is whether that can be attributed to a change in policy, the difficulties of Covid / lack of preseason affecting us disproportionately as we play(ed) at such high intensity, or the loss of the 5% that a crowd can bring.

I think it’s probably a combination of all three really.

 

[Marcus Tullius Cicero]

Skill, the ability to do something well; expertise. How many experts do we have in our team.