Fixture pile ups and tiredness

What's it all about?

On sunday a top game in the English Premier League, Chelsea v Spurs. I have not heard it yet but no doubt soon someone in the Spurs camp will complain about the timing of the fixture. i.e. While Chelsea last played last tuesday, Spurs will be playing tonight, thursday. Oh dear! Chelsea have the "advantage" of the extra two days rest!

So what is it all about?

Long ago my local team played on Good Friday, Saturday and then Easter Monday. In fact, won them all and we went on to be champions.

So what has changed?

One, it is now a squad game. Player rotation allows for rest for some (back in the old days it was virtually the same team each time with no substitutes allowed) Pitches are now like snooker tables compared to the mud sucking surfaces of yesteryear. Boots are like ballet shoes, the balls lighter, unlike the leather water retaining type. Physical contact is now far less, with certain tackles outlawed. Thus all change seems to allow for more matches within any timescale.

But if anyone questions the current managers crying out against the need to play two games a week, or to turn out on tuesday when they had to play the late game saturday, they are told that they "do not understand the modern game." The managers talk about burn out and even the need for a Christmas break, talking about the "madness" of the current demands upon our top players. Yes, this is "elite sport" but.......

What is it I do not understand? I really am willing to listen.

(Please note that I have not spoken of tennis players who turn out for a doubles match a few hours after a singles 5 setter, nor of how much players are now paid. Tennis is not a physical contact sport, which makes all the difference, and whatever payment you receive is irrelevant in this context)

Well, good old Jurgen Klopp has started up! I like the guy actually, a true football fan who is also a great coach and motivator.

But he's off on one! The "sheer madness" of his team playing on wednesday night and then being asked to turn out again at saturday lunch time! Good grief! Young guys at the peak of their physical fitness being asked to put in two 90 minute shifts in three days! Send 'em down a coal mine as my old dad would have said!

Anyway, dear old Kloppy enjoys the telly money, spending £75m on Virgil van whatshisname and getting £10m himself a year. You see Jurgen, the telly people want something back for the billions they put into the game. They like to call the shots now and again.

So his lads must drag themselves out onto the pitch come 12.30 tomorrow, try to shrug of the aches and pains of wednesday.

(Team rotation means many are not actually the same lads and obviously if any begin to flag after 60 minutes or so Jurgen can always send on a substitute. So cheer up lad, its not all doom and gloom)

I hadn't noticed this thread before. If I had I would have replied to it a long time ago.

It isn't quite as simple as just turning out a couple of times a week, Dooks. There are lengthy training sessions in between which are necessary to maintain the peak physical fitness necessary to compete at the highest level.

Professional football in England is played at a very high tempo and players will cover between 12 - 14 km in a match. Not much you may think, but it is mostly carried out either in short sprints or longer bursts between 20 - 70 metres at a pace equivalent to that of an international standard middle distance athlete.

The build up of lactate in their muscles, particularly the long muscles of the calves and hamstrings, caused by the body's need to respire anaerobically when it goes into (frequent) oxygen debt can quickly deplete reserves of stored energy. No matter how much a player is being paid, over a 9 month season, to have to play every 3 or 4 days will leave the player exhausted.

The sports athletics bodies consider that three days between matches is the minimum required to restore a player to adequate playing fitness. But that is a minimum that is becoming a standard.

The top teams can afford to maintain a large squad of players, but of course, the manager would want to field his best XI every time. Of course he has to rotate the squad to rest individuals where possible but it will weaken his team to do that and in tightly fought competitions such as the Premier League, to lose a match that would be expected to be won, because of having played a "weakened" team can cost valuable points in the race for a major trophy.

Also, losing a player through injury can reduce the manager's opportunity to rest individuals. Calf muscles and hamstrings are the most vulnerable muscles. These players are so highly conditioned that they must have hammies like piano wires.

Only one team in England has a squad so talented that they can afford to rest players and bring in others, without any noticeable weakening of the team and that is Manchester City. But they're financially supported by Sheik Mansour who has more money than Croesus and doesn't mind spending it.

Smaller teams can't compete with the top clubs.......... Liverpool included...... who can maintain huge squads of top players.

Having said all that in defence of players suffering from fatigue.......

I don't think Jurgen Klopp has any room to complain, because he has a large squad at his disposal even though he is missing elite players at this time.

Perhaps he should try managing Burnley or Brighton and see what it's like down at the other end of the table.

Ah ha! So what has changed is the existence of training sessions. I never knew they never had them in the past.

Also, the emergence of lactate. An evolutionary development?

Now now, no need to be sarky...

The point I was making is that when only the minimum amount of time is given between matches (ie: 3 days) then fitting training sessions into that period degrades the players ability to recover.

I've seen footage of the old training sessions. No proper warm through before starting and after a few laps of the pitch they'd play a game of five a side. And that was it. Needless to say, modern gym based conditioning sessions are much more rigorous, and that's before they set foot on a piece of grass.

Lactate has always been around and again, well you know it. But the demands on modern day players are much more significant with the pace the game is played at. The modern game is played at a far higher tempo with greater intensity than before. The effects of lactation are more significant during the game.

And of course.... in previous eras there were fewer games. Before 1961 there were only two competitions in England. The league and the FA Cup. One match a week. Plenty of recovery time between games. As has been established in the little chat... players are playing two games a week, in multiple competitions, at greater intensity. The conditioning element of their training sessions will give them the stamina to get through matches but it inevitably places greater long terms demands on the player's physical resources.

The human body hasn't evolved to such a degree in the short space of time between the two eras that conditioning for specific events (ie: matches) can override the prolonged stress from the physical demands of the game.

It's not like you to be obtuse about things. I'm surprised at you.

Why "obtuse"?

I simply do not accept your answer. I understand it.....

i.e. that the "modern game" is played at a pace unknown in the past, the implication that the modern player is so finely tuned physically that (i.e. Hamstrings like piano wires) that two games a week demands too much.

I hold to the proposition that GIVEN substitutes (thus players often not having to play the full 90 minutes) and the greater lack of physical contact (plus the other advantageous changes I listed) to play two games a week for a full season is perfectly reasonable.

A superficially valid argument I'd agree. Substitutions have made a difference to the game but are seldom used for the purposes of injuries or to rest exhausted players. More likely they are used for tactical reasons in the modern game.

Taking a player off five minutes before the end of the match is unlikely to make much difference to his aerobic output. Rather, the coach is likely to use a substitution to break up the game at a time when his team may be under pressure..... waste a half a minute or so in the process of the changeover or shift the tactical pattern of the match (eg: take off a striker and replace him with a defender when his team are winning 1-0 in the last five minutes).

However... if we bring injuries into the equation, then there is little doubt that a massive shift has changed since, say, the 1970s or 80s (before the Premier League era). I think you'd agree that collisions occurring at slow speed (in the 70s or 80s) are less forcible than those that occur at high speed (like,now).

I'll shift the emphasis onto my specialist sport of rugby.

I watched my dad play rugby and although he is the loveliest man in the world and I love him more than anybody, he was a right sod on a rugby pitch. He asked - and gave - no quarter. I once saw him with his shirt off in the garden, covered with bruises the day after being raked with boot studs in a match. He laughed and said "They're not bruises, they're medals."

That mentality has been driven out of the game now. Players are much more protected by the laws of the game, but I'm not convinced that is entirely motivated by compassion for their feelings. Rather, rugby (and football) players are an expensive commodity, playing on big contracts.... and their masters want their moneysworth. Kenny R out for three months with broken ribs and concussion... on full pay.... is not giving value for money.

And so they change the rules to make the game "safer" to play...out of concern for the player, of course.

And if you believe that, you'll believe anything.

For sure... I agree that players are much more protected by the laws of the game than before. But the injuries they tend to suffer now are not split heads, broken collar bones and lost teeth. Now they suffer torn intercostals, ruptured achilles tendons and shredded groins. Ouch. None of these are impact injuries. They are all caused by unnatural movement at high speed, such as occurs in a rugby match. I know.... I've played this game.

Again, the pace of the game contributes to the problem.

You can't tell rugby or football players to play more slowly. They want to win and if it takes running at full tilt into a big (and invariably ugly) prop forward to win, they'll do it.

The mentality hasn't changed. Only the velocity at which the game is played has.

Ah ha......I conjure up the image of a flighty wing-half dipping and diving down the wing. Surely not some hefty specimen engaged in a scrum.......a tight-head prop. And I will leave hookers out of this.

Nearly right.

Centre Threequarter actually. My asset was my pace and I seemed to have a natural ability for running good lines to receive the ball at just the right angle for making gain line breaks.

Wife played in the back row at number 8. The sight of her packing down in the scrum, with her head between the locks and with her bum sticking up in the air as she steered the forward drive was a thing of beauty..!!

I'm the wrong shape to be a prop and didn't have the death wish for it, although I am aware of all the "dark arts" of their position. They are a breed of their own and what they do on a rugby pitch is best kept between themselves.