3 hours ago, dansubrosa said:

At least he’ll get the team really fit and ready to go. That alone is a huge positive based on what we’ve seen this season.

Yeah, I believe this as well, other than Spurs at home in August I honestly can't think of one match where we've played well for more than 30 minutes.

Our fitness has been shocking IMO and I actually remember Tuchel moaning about it earlier in the season, maybe less photos with the LA Dodgers and more hard graft pre-season fitness perhaps could have helped...

Edited May 15, 20233 yr by 2211

4 minutes ago, 2211 said:

Yeah, I believe this as well, other than Spurs at home in August I honestly can't think of one match where we've played well for more than 30 minutes.

Our fitness has been shocking IMO and I actually remember Tuchel moaning about it earlier in the season, maybe less photos with the LA Dodgers and more hard graft pre-season fitness perhaps could have helped...

Agree totally. Pre Season is bollox nowadays. Its all photo shoots and exhibition matches, total waste of time. Its one of the few things i miss about Conte actually. At least he got them fit.

11 minutes ago, 2211 said:

Yeah, I believe this as well, other than Spurs at home in August I honestly can't think of one match where we've played well for more than 30 minutes.

Our fitness has been shocking IMO and I actually remember Tuchel moaning about it earlier in the season, maybe less photos with the LA Dodgers and more hard graft pre-season fitness perhaps could have helped...

Tbh I remember watching live pre-season training sessions on YouTube, and other than small 5 a sides, finishing work and rondo sessions I didn't see any endurance specific work. 

Tuchel really needs to be held accountable for a lot of f**k ups. 

Edited May 15, 20233 yr by Sconnie Blue

11 minutes ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Tbh I remember watching a live pre-season training sessions on YouTube and other than small 5 a side and rondo sessions I didn't see any endurance work. 

Tuchel really is immune to some criticism. 

I wasn't defending Tuchel (just in case you thought that) I was just making a point about our poor fitness this season, for example I remember a photo of the Spurs players flat out on their backs after a Conte pre-season training session but on this flip side I remember loads of Chelsea photo shoots at LA Dodgers, wearing hats, tops and sporting baseball bats etc...

Edited May 15, 20233 yr by 2211

6 minutes ago, 2211 said:

I wasn't defending Tuchel (just in case you thought that) I was just making a point about our poor fitness this season, for example I remember a photo of the Spurs players flat out on their backs after a Conte pre-season training session but on this flip side I remember loads of Chelsea photo shoots at LA Dodgers, wearing hats, tops and sporting baseball bats etc...

It was Tuchel moaning about our players fitness bit. It really adds to the 'we have the same players' remark and him being annoyed Gallagher couldn't play in the pivot. 

A lot of this was his own doing. 

4 minutes ago, Sconnie Blue said:

It was Tuchel moaning about our players fitness bit. It really adds to the 'we have the same players' remark and him being annoyed Gallagher couldn't play in the pivot. 

A lot of this was his own doing. 

I still think you're missing my original point about fitness a little bit, I don't think Tuchel is immune from criticism.

I only hope with all the negotiations Mauricio  has put a clause in that if Yanky Todd walks in the dressing room  Mauricio can walk with a massive pay off    if he has he will be here a month at tops 

29 minutes ago, 2211 said:

I still think you're missing my original point about fitness a little bit, I don't think Tuchel is immune from criticism.

No I agree with you. It was Tuchel complaining about these things and other fans defending him when in reality a lot of these things were his doing and not Boehly's. 

2 minutes ago, Sconnie Blue said:

No I agree with you. It was Tuchel complaining about these things and other fans defending him when in reality a lot of these things were his doing and not Boehly's. 

Ahh Ok, fair enough 🙂

Edited May 15, 20233 yr by 2211

So glad it's going to be Pochettino rather than some of the other candidates that were being punted about.

All we can hope is that he is backed and given time. Hopefully we will see a big improvement fairly early but of course there will be ups and downs. No doubt he will get absolute pelters from some of our fanbase (especially the Neanderthals who wanted Mourinho back for a third time!) when he tastes his first defeat, but I'm certain we have the right man and am looking forward to next season and beyond.

 

Woe betide him though if we lose to f**king Spurs! 

10 minutes ago, Sconnie Blue said:

No I agree with you. It was Tuchel complaining about these things and other fans defending him when in reality a lot of these things were his doing and not Boehly's. 

I think both you and @2211 are right. But i would even go farther back than this.

For me the chronology would be something along the lines of.

• During Mourinho II clearly he started to lose the dressing room and started calling players out. His training sessions changed from the focussed, intense, game related sessions and the team became "flabby" and lazy all over the pitch.
• When he went, the perception was that the "rats" had let him down and the team as a whole needed a hard task master to make them run and work. Guus had come in and had steadied the ship but there was still this underlying feeling that the dressing room was full of cheats not putting in the shifts needed.
• Conte arrived and we plodded along for a while playing the way we had until we got a rinsing at Arsenal. From that point on he absolutely ran the bollox off of them and we became one of the fittest teams in the league. The lack of European football helped with this.
• Then for whatever reason, the players complaining about the intensity of the training sessions, lack of major signings that Conte wanted, lack of open support from the club hierarching over the furore from the Costa bombing by text, Conte turned into a massive negative force within the club at times and, in my belief, physically undermined the team and players and our ability to win games on occasion. No more intense training sessions and the players fitness levels dropped again.
• Sarri then comes in with his Sarri-ball, which doesn't translate here because his Napoli team were built on major running off the ball. Not this lot so Sarri-ball dies on its ar$e. In fairness to Sarri he was actually improving us and getting us slowly to where we wanted to be but i think that his heart wasn't in it any more. He'd been getting dogs abuse and had the chance to go home and manage Juve. So a slight improvement in fitness levels wasn't followed through.
• Enter Frank and Jody, who for me were always classroom managers working on text book drills and routines that may have worked in the non contact environment of development football. Here, i thought fitness levels fell off a cliff, just through lack of organisation and structure.
• Then for me Tuchel came in and fixed us. As a tactician he was excellent. He could read the opposition very quickly and knew how to beat them. Simple really. But fitness wise i don't think we improved and as his tenure lengthened we looked more and more stale and leggy because of this lack of underlying core fitness.

For me, it has been ingrained for a number of years now, and whilst there have been a few peaks that have masked the deficiencies, i don't believe that the players as a collective have had a sufficient level of competitive fitness since that first season under Conte.

 

I am so surprised that Boehly can piss me off with every single decision 

 

we are lucky if we can scrap top 4 in the next 5 years, hope we survive without relegation before the end of his reign

Thrilled with this - I don’t think we can do any better. I like how he galvanizes a team Give it a proper preseason and some time. Must trim the squad. 

It’s also been so long since we’ve signed and actually improved players. I’m excited to see him work with Enzo, Mudryk, Fofana etc. 

1 hour ago, WhiteWall said:

• Enter Frank and Jody, who for me were always classroom managers working on text book drills and routines that may have worked in the non contact environment of development football. Here, i thought fitness levels fell off a cliff, just through lack of organisation and structure.

 

When Frank 2.0 took over from Potter he said that the team were not fit at all.

Mauricio is from the Bielsa school of fitness and so we should see a rapid improvement.

Mauricio likes the notorious Gacon test.

To start with, the players have 45 seconds to cover 150 metres, with 15 seconds to rest," explained Pochettino in his book. "In each subsequent 45-second rep, they have to run 6.25 metres further, with the intensity steadily increasing."

The players hate the amount of running he makes them do. He aims to break them and he does.

Edited May 15, 20233 yr by TheCeleryKing

1 hour ago, TheCeleryKing said:

Mauricio likes the notorious Gacon test.

To start with, the players have 45 seconds to cover 150 metres, with 15 seconds to rest," explained Pochettino in his book. "In each subsequent 45-second rep, they have to run 6.25 metres further, with the intensity steadily increasing."

The players hate the amount of running he makes them do. He aims to break them and he does.

Read this somewhere else’s also most of this lot don’t like running and haven’t ran much since Potter took over.  Going to interesting to see how they react to being told you have to run!!!

2 hours ago, WhiteWall said:

I think both you and @2211 are right. But i would even go farther back than this.

For me the chronology would be something along the lines of.

• During Mourinho II clearly he started to lose the dressing room and started calling players out. His training sessions changed from the focussed, intense, game related sessions and the team became "flabby" and lazy all over the pitch.
• When he went, the perception was that the "rats" had let him down and the team as a whole needed a hard task master to make them run and work. Guus had come in and had steadied the ship but there was still this underlying feeling that the dressing room was full of cheats not putting in the shifts needed.
• Conte arrived and we plodded along for a while playing the way we had until we got a rinsing at Arsenal. From that point on he absolutely ran the bollox off of them and we became one of the fittest teams in the league. The lack of European football helped with this.
• Then for whatever reason, the players complaining about the intensity of the training sessions, lack of major signings that Conte wanted, lack of open support from the club hierarching over the furore from the Costa bombing by text, Conte turned into a massive negative force within the club at times and, in my belief, physically undermined the team and players and our ability to win games on occasion. No more intense training sessions and the players fitness levels dropped again.
• Sarri then comes in with his Sarri-ball, which doesn't translate here because his Napoli team were built on major running off the ball. Not this lot so Sarri-ball dies on its ar$e. In fairness to Sarri he was actually improving us and getting us slowly to where we wanted to be but i think that his heart wasn't in it any more. He'd been getting dogs abuse and had the chance to go home and manage Juve. So a slight improvement in fitness levels wasn't followed through.
• Enter Frank and Jody, who for me were always classroom managers working on text book drills and routines that may have worked in the non contact environment of development football. Here, i thought fitness levels fell off a cliff, just through lack of organisation and structure.
• Then for me Tuchel came in and fixed us. As a tactician he was excellent. He could read the opposition very quickly and knew how to beat them. Simple really. But fitness wise i don't think we improved and as his tenure lengthened we looked more and more stale and leggy because of this lack of underlying core fitness.

For me, it has been ingrained for a number of years now, and whilst there have been a few peaks that have masked the deficiencies, i don't believe that the players as a collective have had a sufficient level of competitive fitness since that first season under Conte.

 

If you read Matt Law's telegraph article on Tino fitness is a really big part of his regime. I think that this is great for a while but eventually the players tire of it. That contributes to eventual dissatisfaction with demanding fitness managers like Conte and perhaps Tino. In all these things to stay on the top you have to keep innovating, finding new ways every season to keep the players interested and the motivation high.

Equally as we have already seen a top class medical and sports science team is a big deal. Have to make sure players are not over used when their muscles are already weary and mistakes creep in. Seemingly simple things like diet are also a big deal. Conte was apparently really big on diet.

However in my opinion its not the coach that really makes a team fit, its the team wanting to be fit. Before fitness comes team character and in my view its not a striker or midfielder per se that's the most important thing but the captain or the guy that makes the team play. The sergeant/major if you will.

9 hours ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Tbh I remember watching live pre-season training sessions on YouTube, and other than small 5 a sides, finishing work and rondo sessions I didn't see any endurance specific work. 

Tuchel really needs to be held accountable for a lot of f**k ups. 

I think they all do, going as far back as Sarri. Conte had them fit, but since the days of Sarri-ball, or Sloth-ball as I like to call it now, we have been one of the most unfit sides in the league. On the rare days that we did manage to play fast, energetic football, it would only last for one half at most, and we would pay for it with an injury or two. I remember the previous two seasons how often a lot of us would point out how we would play one half of football, only to look like we had taken sleeping tablets in the other half. Now we can't even get one half of that. Literally any side that puts a bit of pressure on us has our players dead on their feet. 

I remember watching Lukaku last season and the sweat was pouring off him after one or two sprints and he was completely gassed. I know Lukaku is known for putting on the weight and not looking after himself, but this was ridiculous. It's not just him either. The only ones that aren't like this are the players that arrived in January, everybody else looks exhausted after a bit of sprinting. 

Recently I have been pointing out that it's the same 4 players that keep picking up these muscle injuries. Kante, Kovacic, James and Chilwell, and these are the only players I see doing any sprinting. It's like their bodies aren't being trained to cope with it. They should all be capable of doing it for 90 minutes of the game, like most players at this level in todays game. But when I watch them sprint, I wince because I fear that they are going to pull up with an injury. It's not all paranoia either because it happens to them every few weeks. All 4 of them are out injured again with muscle injuries. 

10 hours ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Tbh I remember watching live pre-season training sessions on YouTube, and other than small 5 a sides, finishing work and rondo sessions I didn't see any endurance specific work. 

Tuchel really needs to be held accountable for a lot of f**k ups. 

You watched a live preseason training session and expected the team to do intense endurance work? There's a reason you only saw camera-friendly exercises. 

Under Tuchel we were the most intense pressers in the league, combined with the fact that we played the most games in Europe during his reign. 

 

 

 

11 hours ago, 2211 said:

Yeah, I believe this as well, other than Spurs at home in August I honestly can't think of one match where we've played well for more than 30 minutes.

Our fitness has been shocking IMO and I actually remember Tuchel moaning about it earlier in the season, maybe less photos with the LA Dodgers and more hard graft pre-season fitness perhaps could have helped...

It was a sh*tshow really in terms of scheduling, timing after the world cup, new player integration etc. It was always going to be a struggle and we needed a master tactician to get us through this season, and we had one... 

47 minutes ago, ozboy said:

The author of this study, as well as a number of his colleagues at ACU, have been targeted by people such as Raymond Verheijen, who has been staunchly and vocally opposed to this while being incredibly influential in English football. Gabbett and colleagues have long argued for data-driven, specialised, individualised conditioning and performance programs for athletes that incorporate sport-specific training as well as athletic work. Verheijen, on the other hand, believes that footballers obtain sufficient conditioning just by doing football training exercises and there is no need for specific, non-football fitness work.

Many managers adopt the latter school of thought because it's "easier" to program and gives them more time with their players. With increasing match schedules and less time between games and between seasons, time on the training pitch is increasingly at a premium. However, the whole point of focusing fitness training around injury prevention (especially when the evidence suggests that fitter players are less likely to get injured) is to ensure your best players are on the park more regularly. We know for certain that teams with fewer injuries are more successful.

This is a hard one to grasp, under Tuchel last season we had a lot of injuries due to schedule and intense pressing. Potter had few games to manage, and less focus on intense pressing, yet the injuries didn't improve. Lampard complained about lack of physical fitness, yet nothing really changed under his short regime, players looked unfit and still fall down like flies. If Pochettino is going to drive players through the wall during pre-season, let it be. Man City had a lots of rotations in early and mid part of the season, and more than usual amount of below-par performance ( by their gold standard), yet in the business end of the season where other teams all faltered, they have been on an great run. If they do win the triple, or even league and CL, got admit Pep got it spot on with timing and team  management over the season

https://www.chelsea-news.co/2023/05/pochettino-interviewed-chelsea-and-will-start-to-collaborate-with-frank-lampard/

Jacobs said: “Incoming manager Mauricio Pochettino will be watching a number of players very closely. Although the Argentine won’t start until next season, he will collaborate with Frank Lampard between now and then.

 

@g3.7 Ding ding ding

I like this appointment since atleast we are going for something tried and tested and not a random punt again.. 3 of our last 4 have been punts and as a result we have lost our credibility I think. 
for me a steady top 4 finish and then a real go is what I am looking for. Anything above like an FA Cup or a league cup is just bonus.