Are we physically and athletically the meekest squad in the league?

Imo our current physical conditions might be simply the result of super intensive heavy fitness sessions. To play the football ETH wants the squad would need to run a lot and thus need a shitload of stamina. So in order to prepare what required for a long season we might have had a lot of super intensive heavy fitness sessions in pre season.

I'm no expert but that's what teams usually do in my country and that period is called 'fitness stuffing' which involves shitload of running and intensive fitness sessions in pre season. That might also explain the injuries of Shaw, Mount and Varane. From what I heard players would easily get muscle injury while doing that if their body are not robust enough. We also used to do that under SAF I think. If my memory serves me right Ole talked about it and said he could barely walk after those sessions.
 
Caught the Newcastle - Liverpool game. Prior to the VVD's red card, both teams were straight up fighting for every possession, pressing for every ball. Every time I watch teams do this, I always wonder why our players don't do this too. Is it due to ETH's coaching? Is it that our players think they're too talented to press and do some dirty work? Is it because our players naturally lack any sort of physicality?
 
Micky Targaryen said:
Caught the Newcastle - Liverpool game. Prior to the VVD's red card, both teams were straight up fighting for every possession, pressing for every ball. Every time I watch teams do this, I always wonder why our players don't do this too. Is it due to ETH's coaching? Is it that our players think they're too talented to press and do some dirty work? Is it because our players naturally lack any sort of physicality?
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Not sure what it is, we have moments in some games where the players are buzzing around like angry wasps, pressing like a team as well, we are agressive and win the ball up high, then after 5 min it just fades off and the players mostly jog back when losing the ball again. So i think we can say the players have that kind of aggression in their locker. We surely must be able to do something similar to what other top teams does and always chase agressively right after losing the ball, make it really hard for them to build up any play of their own.
 
I dont know if we have a team full of weakling, but its clear that our half assed pressing from the front and midfield isnt doing us any good. I know its a new manager and all, but its not like our squad should be completely unfamiliar with it by now and other teams and other managers have shown you dont need several years to become semi-decent at it
 
I think ETH is avoiding suspensions. Casemiro was our spine last season. If casemiro is to be suspended now, we would be in serious trouble. That is the more reason why Amrabat deal would have been perfect
 
My guess here is that we have couple selfish players , and they tend to withhold from fighting the 50/50 ball, let other teammates do the covering and pressing and they can just save some legs and choose positions to intercept, or just do the bare minimum to track back his area and don't care if his teammates need extra support to defense the overload.

Rashford quite often matched the above description , Sancho pretty much the same case and Shaw could be quite passive sometimes as well . Bruno is also a hidden one here , he seems very diligent running around, but too often throw himself out of position, then got past and totally exposed, and then jogging back. The frequency was too often that I started questioning if he did it on purpose so he would display his "work-hard" image while no need to do the real tiring work of pressing and tracking back .

Once you have couple figures like that, the culture of sacrificing for the team would not exist. Everybody would only care about themselves , ensure they got the good stats, no error from their own area; but on the team level , no one leave positions to do the extra leg work and pressing, and we constantly lose the 50/50 duel , and look very vulnerable once anyone got past .
 
I think the issue lays more with mentality rather than lack of physical attributes. Too many players in the team are unwilling to put in the effort and fight for every ball, unless all conditions are perfect and they've woken up on the right side of bed that day. Mentality wise there are too many weak links for the team to function as the managers intends it to
 
Strelok said:
Imo our current physical conditions might be simply the result of super intensive heavy fitness sessions. To play the football ETH wants the squad would need to run a lot and thus need a shitload of stamina. So in order to prepare what required for a long season we might have had a lot of super intensive heavy fitness sessions in pre season.

I'm no expert but that's what teams usually do in my country and that period is called 'fitness stuffing' which involves shitload of running and intensive fitness sessions in pre season. That might also explain the injuries of Shaw, Mount and Varane. From what I heard players would easily get muscle injury while doing that if their body are not robust enough. We also used to do that under SAF I think. If my memory serves me right Ole talked about it and said he could barely walk after those sessions.
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That's my thinking too and, as I said earlier, Ten Hag teams seem to have have historically been slow starters. It's still worked out for him in his previous postings so, while it's a bit frustrating having only patches of good football from us in these early stages, there's no reason to assume that we're just rubbish now.
 
it is not athleticism or physicality that the team lacks, it is simply intensity and desire, I remember in the last game and several times, when Rashford was running with the ball on the left, several NFFC players sprinted at him and he got surrounded in seconds, and the same happens to Antony to, in the game vs Spurs, our players simply didn't track runners, despite the numbers of players in defense.
 
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