Fitness Levels

You do wonder about our conditioning and fitness levels.

We are not as athletic, as say Spurs.

However, I do believe that part of the reason we look lethargic is due to the injury situation. In the first four months, we couldn't rotate the full backs, one of our small pool of central midfielders has been unavailable for most of the season, Silva is clearly not fit, and we were not able to rotate Silva or De Bruyne as much as we wanted as Nasri has pretty much missed the entire season. Aguero too could have been rested more recently.
 
Not for the first time this season we have watched City fail to match the opposition for workrate or intensity. The players looked physically shattered out there and even the Liverpool players like Henderson, Milner looked in much better shape even though they had played in the Cup Final.

Stats of late have revealed Bacary Sagna on average covers the most ground,on average, of any City player and yet his average only places him at 67th overall in the Premiership. Furthermore it was stated Spurs, in the 2-1 defeat, covered nearly 6 more miles collectively than the City team.

Personally I find it difficult to believe it relates to the laziness of the players, as this seems to afflict the majority of the players, and can only presume it is down to the training and conditioning work undertaken. For me this is the biggest failure of this season and which seems to undermine our progress.
I've been saying for some time now that the team simply is not fit enough. Having once been a YTS footballer I'm all to aware of what a fit or an not fit team looks like and city clearly look unfit and have done for a very long time
. I would look to pop down a watch them train, I would not be suprised to see them arrive late, leave early and barely go through the motions. We are where we are this season only because we do have world class Individual players.
 
Not for the first time this season we have watched City fail to match the opposition for workrate or intensity. The players looked physically shattered out there and even the Liverpool players like Henderson, Milner looked in much better shape even though they had played in the Cup Final.

Stats of late have revealed Bacary Sagna on average covers the most ground,on average, of any City player and yet his average only places him at 67th overall in the Premiership. Furthermore it was stated Spurs, in the 2-1 defeat, covered nearly 6 more miles collectively than the City team.

Personally I find it difficult to believe it relates to the laziness of the players, as this seems to afflict the majority of the players, and can only presume it is down to the training and conditioning work undertaken. For me this is the biggest failure of this season and which seems to undermine our progress.

A key issue for us - great post/thread. That stat vs Spurs is a shocker. I fully expect this will be addressed by our new manager.

Having said that, and i'm not dismissing it as a major problem, if you look at the way fitness, stamina, speed and recovery levels have increased in the premier league over the last 10 years, well, lets put it like this, if those levels of increase were shown in other sports like say athletics, cycling or tennis, then serious questions would be asked, and suspicions raised Oh, hang on a minute....
 
We are not as athletic, as say Spurs.

However, I do believe that part of the reason we look lethargic is due to the injury situation. In the first four months, we couldn't rotate the full backs, one of our small pool of central midfielders has been unavailable for most of the season, Silva is clearly not fit, and we were not able to rotate Silva or De Bruyne as much as we wanted as Nasri has pretty much missed the entire season. Aguero too could have been rested more recently.

Possibly rotation has played a part but even players underused have struggled to match there peers for the amount ran per game. It will be interesting when Pep comes as it is likely the squad will decrease in size rather than increase and so there will be more burden placed on the players. I have no doubt we will not be lagging behind our rivals like this year.
 
Look at pictures of the team pre Pelle - fitter, leaner!
Get the f@ckers running up that hill instead of rub downs and saunas at the CFA SPA with a shiny heart monitor on and with a Loughborough graduate looking at graphs.
I keep hearing that players look tired or need resting - they're probably right, but only because of poor training and conditioning in the first place.
 
Since they moved into the best training facilities in the world, they've gone backwards. Something is badly wrong.
 
Possibly rotation has played a part but even players underused have struggled to match there peers for the amount ran per game. It will be interesting when Pep comes as it is likely the squad will decrease in size rather than increase and so there will be more burden placed on the players. I have no doubt we will not be lagging behind our rivals like this year.

Aye. One of things I am looking forward to next year is matching the energy of other teams. It will take a while though as pre season will be very short this year due to summer international comps.

I know Pep likes smallish squads but I think he will be fully aware that he would need more players than he usually likes because of the intensity here and lack of winter break.
 
I can't see most of that side making it under Pep. He has a job on his hands alright. The decay of the side is entrenched.
 

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