The Real Person to Blame?

[magpie2k4]

Let’s look at two of the main reasons this season has gone wrong..

Fitness - Each of our managers has complained about the fitness of the players. It leads to mistakes, especially at the end of each half through lack of concentration and tiredness setting in.

Injuries - From the start of pre-season to now, we have so many injuries that come from the training ground.. this has been across all our managers. AH said on twitter last week (along the lines of) “I’ve been reliably informed that our constant injuries are due to a poor pre-season”

Now let’s consider any changes between this year and last ... or for the matter, any season and this season ..

The main, obvious difference I can see is that we replaced Mike Edwards, with a new strength and conditioning coach...

This seems so obvious to me, I can’t understand why it’s not been looked at in more depth? Two managers have lost their jobs, and yet this guy continues his routines with the players and our squad are just as unfit and injury prone as they have been under all our managers!

Am I missing something?

[jackal2]

Hmmm, I'm a Steady Eddy fan and it always felt better when he was around the club, but I think this would be stretching the argument a little. Fitness clearly could be better, but I doubt it's the whole problem.

As I said on another post last week, if you step back and look at the picture of Notts over the past 3 seasons, Kevin Nolan inherited a team bottom of the league and the three key additions he made which turned things around were Ryan Yates who added strength in our midfield, Jorge Grant who scored goals, and Shola Ameobi who was a proper target man. All three have now gone, and I don't think it's a complete coincidence that we find ourselves back where Kevin Nolan started.

[magpie2k4]

I understand what you are saying ..

But from the perspective of fitness and injuries ..

Is it not a valid question to ask?

That the current strength and conditioning is not good enough?

[Freeman25]

If you have a bad pre season it takes a very long time to recover from it. It's why Mourinho was sacked by Chelsea in his second stint and people were joking about them fighting relegation for the first half of his last season. He let players have more time off in the summer and it backfired massively on him and that's a top premier league team with much better facilities, coaches and sports scientists than us so it's no wonder we're still playing catch up.

[jackal2]

If you have a bad pre season it takes a very long time to recover from it. It's why Mourinho was sacked by Chelsea in his second stint and people were joking about them fighting relegation for the first half of his last season. He let players have more time off in the summer and it backfired massively on him and that's a top premier league team with much better facilities, coaches and sports scientists than us so it's no wonder we're still playing catch up.

True. The signs in pre-season were ominous, from people being seen out late on the night before a pre-season game to the actual performances themselves. Yes we were against strong opposition in Leicester and Derby, but they tore our defence to shreds in a worrying omen of what was to come. Poor preparation leads to poor performance, and so it has proved.

[magpie2k4]

Have you ever known a season where we have had so many injuries from training? Spread consistently across all three managers.

That plus the lack of fitness in the players can’t be linked to any one individual other than the strength and conditioning coach. He’s the only constant throughout the whole season!

This didn’t happen last season under Nolan (and Mike Edwards) .. but instead started in preseason... Dennis and Hemmings both getting injured within a couple of weeks!

[Freeman25]

I highly doubt Mike Edwards is some kind of fitness messiah, he got the job at Notts because of his current links here and I'm fairly sure I remember us going through other spells where we had a few injuries and people were asking if he was qualified enough or just a case of jobs for the boys.

We've also changed our style of play too many times this season, Nolan tried to change it at the start of the season from a direct team to a losing team... I have no idea what he was trying to do really but we didn't play pretty football and weren't as direct as last season, then Kewell came in with new ideas and wanted us to play the way they train the coaches at St Georges Park, the same way Sol Campbell had his Macclesfield team trying to play out from the back, it's cookie cutter "England DNA" coaching and the players weren't fit enough to play his style, then Ardley came in and we changed our style again and they players then needed to adapt to what he wanted them to do, none of that helps.

I'm also not sure when Kewell and Ardley say the players aren't fit enough they mean they're not used to their ideas, there's not many times players have looked physically exhausted out on the pitch this season imo other than the odd couple of players, Stead after a win just laying on the floor was one. I don't remember any of them pulling up with cramp either, I think it's a general excuse to explain that the players aren't where they need to be according to the manager.

Then you also have the fact that we are where we are it's far less appealing to the players to try and play through any pain, so a slight knock becomes an excuse to not play whereas if we were flying high players would want to be part of it and play through it.

[magpie2k4]

I’m not suggest Mike Edwards was a genius ..

I’m suggesting the current guy is not good enough!

It’s never been as bad as this before, no matter who had the job .. this summer we get a new bloke and it’s been injury after injury and no one seemed fit and ready.

Surely you can see the correlation between us employing a new person as strength and conditioning coach ... and the players conditioning going down hill!

[GranthamPie]

It was talked about by Stallard and Slater the other day... both questioned if Notts had ever had an injury crisis like this before... and more importantly, why?

[Freeman25]

I don't think we're getting any more injuries than previously to be honest, last season we had;

Jon Forte was injured every other week
Curtis Thompson injured a lot
Shola Ameobi struggled fairly often
Michael O'Connor was obviously out for most of it
Adam Collin had a long injury
Jon Stead missed a fair bit of time injured
Jorge Grant had an injury for a while and played through it a few times
Dan Jones missed a lot though injury
Branislav Pindroch got injured in training before a game (like he did this season)
Liam Noble was injured in January
Matt Tootle was injured a couple of times (hence Nicky Hunt playing)
Ben Hall ended the season injured
Rob Milsom missed a couple of months injured
Mason Bennett went down with an injury a couple of games into his loan etc...

And that's just off the top of my head, I think it's a combination of people looking for excuses (a reason for us being so sh*t) and the fact that players won't want to play through knocks at the moment. You also have things like Milsom and Ward allegedly missing game time due to contract clauses and Ardley states they're "unavailable for selection"