Enough is enough

anybody hear that Deila is away home for a holiday ( not saying he,s not entitled to a break ) during the international fortnight on SSB last night.

 

Lennon is a Celtic legend no doubt, I've always supported him even when others where throwing the toys out of the pram. But Deila has a point. I don't think its being disrespectful pointing out the obvious, Lennon should have done something about it when he was in charge, we're talking about professional athletes here.

 

I just think that's a case of different managers will expect different levels of fitness from his players. Each will have their own idea of how fit they want the players. Some managers and coaches will be fitness fanatics, whereas other won't be as much. I don't see a problem with Deila wanting the players to be fitter than they were to be honest, but I don't think some players are seeing it the same way, and I do genuinely believe that some are not playing for him. I think there is a lot of similarities between what is going on with us just now, and what happened with Moyes at Man Utd.

 

This might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure his family are still living in Norway, so it's only natural for him to want to see them. Can't be easy being away from them, especially when he will have seen them every day in his last job. This will be another stick for the media to hit him with though.

 

It's not an issue that he wants the team fitter, I've been advocating that for years, it was just like it was a dig at Lenny. Which I didn't like.

 

Wasn't Deila in the job two weeks and being sniped at from Mjallby and then Lennon to his new found friends at the BBC?

Double standards.

 

There was no swipes at Deila. There was at the board, infact they backed him, saying it's been on the cards even while they were at the club. Due to the way the clubs being managed, not the team.

 

Lennon had said that Deila was meant to be his assistant. That didn't really help either to be fair. He should have kept that quiet in my opinion.

 

Aye, possibly, I'll agree there. But everything Lenny has said about Deila has been entirely respectful. Not so much about the board.

 

Aye, I haven't heard Lennon being disrespectful towards him either mate, but I think that has worked both ways. I think the media are doing a fine job of stirring things though, and stories are being portrayed differently.

 

Exactly right.

 

Lenny´s players were plenty fit enough for Lenny´s (very successful) system but not fit enough for Deila´s. Simples. There´s just no issue here IMO.

It´s not like taking already very fit athletes to a higher fitness level comes for free: first of all it can impact on team spirit and moral (as we are seeing) and secondly many players assert (and I believe them) that it does take that slight edge off the accuracy of their passing.

I remember Zdenik Zemen´s teams in the 90´s put an incredible emphasis on fitness and many people even back them used to comment on the slight effect all that fitness work had on player technique (and at the top level slight effects are everything). Zemen was (nevertheless) a pretty successful coach.

There´s no right and wrong here, everything is a tradeoff and the important thing is to choose the right compromise for your players/system IMO.

 

Look at the top teams in the world and the top players. They are all at peak fitness. A lot has changed in the past ten years, footballers now are super athletes. I don't think there should be a trade off, I think it should make you a better player, sharper for the full 90 minutes. I agree that it probably does take a toll on team moral, that and losing games when ur working hard to get to that level of fitness.

 

Our players are at peak fitness too. We´re talking tiny margins here.

 

That is what I was getting at earlier. Every manager will have his own idea on how fit he wants his players. Look at Diego Simeone, he could probably take over any team in world football, and want them fitter than they are, because he wants his team playing with such a high intensity. I can't remember for certain who it was, perhaps Gary Neville, who said he hadn't seen any team warm up even like Atletico. He was talking about how high the tempo was.

 

If they are now, they weren't when Deila took over. You can actually see how much weight some of our players have lost, the margins weren't that tiny lol.

 

Less weight doesn't equal fitter though.

 

I'd like to think it does with our team, some of the boys were on the pudgy side.

 

Like who?

Honestly, I've not saw any difference yet, infact we looked * against Hamilton. Lenny's team went through series of games like we did just there (5 in 15 days) and looked a lot sharper, a lot more match fit.

But we still need to see the end results, it's only been a couple of months.

 

Izaguire has been noticeable, and I think hes been playing a lot better recently because of it. I dont think we looked * against Hamilton, what I saw was players not putting the ball in the back of the net, the finishing was terrible.