Anyone think the Christmas fixture congestion will benefit us?

We was a side last year in the championship capable of grinding out results every few days (albeit vs lesser teams) with largely the same team as now. Most of the time it's been 1 whole week between games with each team fully fresh.

We was a side that lost 4 on the bounce last Christmas.

I would say that every team we play - even Palace - have deeper squad of better players. So no.

I think we will struggle as our depth of talent is not great , If you ask yourself how many of our players would get into a first eleven of any other Premiership club ,that should help with the answer.

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Originally Posted by NYCBlue

I would say that every team we play - even Palace - have deeper squad of better players. So no.

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In our several failed promotion attempts under Dave Jones, we certainly didn't have any strength in depth, yet the players tended to get better results if they had games in quick succession than when they had a week between them. Longer than than (international breaks etc) tended to yield poorer results.

I think it was Brian Clough that always maintained that playing was better training than training. (If you follow me!) Every team only has 25 players to choose from so the permutations of 11 plus reserves doesn't change that much. ButyI do recall Klopp moaning earlier in the year because his players had to play 3 games in 9 days and it "wasn't fair".

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Originally Posted by xsnaggle

I think it was Brian Clough that always maintained that playing was better training than training. (If you follow me!) Every team only has 25 players to choose from so the permutations of 11 plus reserves doesn't change that much. ButyI do recall Klopp moaning earlier in the year because his players had to play 3 games in 9 days and it "wasn't fair".

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I think people often get the wrong end of the stick about fixtures. It's not that players nowadays are lazy or for 100k a week they should be able to play three times a week etc, it's about getting players close to their peak for the game.

99% of them would play four games a week if they could but they would fade badly after 70 minutes. We've seen it ourselves; I remember under Jones there was a season where we'd always concede after 85 minutes, and another season under Mackay where we always felt we'd score after 85. That wasn't luck or tactical, it was simply that the team as a whole was better conditioned than the opposition. Most goals come from individual errors, and tiredness increases the chance of making an error as everyone who's played at any level will know.


I don't know what Klopp's problem was exactly, but I'd imagine it was to do with other rival clubs getting more rest days in between matches.