Is this Ten Hag’s excuse for some of his players and club staff that seem incapable of healthy relationships with women and treating them like actual human beings?
I agree with him 100%. It’s why most of the big clubs have bigger squads and players with some good versatility, so help cover multiple positions and allow others to rest. It’s hard on the smaller teams and those with less back up options in their squads. Brighton especially seem to be decimated with injuries whilst also having to factor in a European schedule.
Chelsea have enough players to rotate for another 2 more competitions. Best club ITW /s
Newcastle had 10 squad members (and Elliot Anderson who’s u21 but a key squad member) out against Chelsea, we’ve got 2 games a week till Xmas.
Even with a decent 25 man squad we’re at bare bones, we named 4 keepers and mostly kids on our bench, and started a 17y/o…
There’s tough schedules and there’s ridiculous schedules. Next year’s changes to the champions league will add another burden for most clubs competing in that.
And then the double side of that is if you lose European football you can’t afford to expand your squad to much or have tonnes of players in a non Euro season who just won’t get enough football, so aside from teams who can stay in the top 3 regularly to build a massive squad, it just becomes a massive gamble on injuries.
Yeah, if this keeps up it’s gonna become really important to have a versatile squad and bench. Having players who can only play one position is gonna be a luxury
Pep was way ahead of the curve on this one.
Emma Hayes has been building her Chelsea Women squad in this mould for years too. So many versatile players. Genuinely at least half of the squad can play at least three different positions.
Erin Cuthbert is her dream. Has played wing back on both flanks, defensive midfield, box-to-box, attacking midfield, both wings.
A lot is made of CFCW’s depth in terms of numbers, but it’s the versatility that is key - and Hayes has built it that way.
Claudio Ranieri was first manager I remember who really started rotating players in the Premiership. The British press nicknamed him the tinkerman because of it
I remember pundits completely losing it back then lol
“It’s disrespectful!” :D
Managers occasionally used to complain about CL clubs resting players and fielding weakened sides against their opposition.
The same managers then started resting their best players against Mourinho’s Chelsea to preserve their strength for matches they had a chance of winning, and everyone just kind of accepted that rotation is what we do now.
Didn’t help Wenger that much tbh, we were always crippled by injuries come Feb
Mostly because refs back then were totally cool with allowing teams to just kick them off the park
Europa has always been difficult for teams to handle. You often saw teams qualify and then next season be battling relegation. This isn’t a new phenomenon.
The thing is that the top teams in most leagues are rather stable and can plan on playing international football (and reaping the corresponding revenue and prize money) every season, so that they can afford to build large squads geared toward playing in 3/4 competitions. On the #6 or #7 spots, there is typically far higher volatility from year to year, so these clubs neither have the large squad, nor can they build one based on a one-off participation in international competition.
We had 4 different competitions AND a winter World Cup AND a messed up schedule due to the queen’s death last season, it was fucking absurd watching us playing every 3 days
This year should have been postponed like three weeks or so.
Im surprised the most upvoted comments wasn’t a “Erik ten excuses” joke.
The bigger clubs usually had more matches. But with addition of conference league, the smaller clubs are beginning to feel the same pain
There’s always been 7-8 slots in Europe, and smaller clubs have always struggled with it. Stoke, Swansea, West Ham basically threw a qualifier one year to avoid it.
Oh yeah thats a good point. Here in the eredivisie, with recent coefficient points we have and the conference league, 8th place will already play europa games. Thats the half of the league where it used to be (on the top of my head) first champipns league play offs and second europa league play offs
It really hurts smaller teams.
We have so many out injured and we just dont have any depth to cover it up. We had 3 players on the bench yesterday that arent supposed to be close to the first team yet.
That’s why I’m so grateful for Darmian. Without him we’d have been in the mud last year and even this year with Pavard going down and also Dumfries having no backup
As an Arsenal fan, I’m really grateful we have Trossard and Tomiyasu. Both can cover multiple positions and both are really talented footballers.
Timber was supposed to be that as well :(
Kai plays LB too
I think this is one way managers such as Pep, Arteta & even Klopp partially have been ahead of the curve, by building squads where a single player can play multiple positions. This allows better coverage of injuries and better rotation. Still not sufficient but assuages the effect somewhat.
Manchester United have been too focussed on putting all the eggs into one basket with huge $$$ signings since Pogba and ETH is partially at fault, buying players like Mount who can just play in one position (which is already, more or less, taken by Fernandes) and average dosh like Anthony.
Increase squad size and limit how many games a player can play in a year.
Of course the “obvious” solution is to reduce games played but that will put a dent in the organizer’s pocket so it’s never happening.
What do you think of mandating a minimum number of minutes for academy players/season, to take pressure off big players. Something like 2000-3000 minutes (i.e 20-30 games worth, to be split between as many academy players as need be). Also incentivizes clubs bring youth through
impossible, it will just ruin the market and quality of the league.
Interesting idea but how would you account for academies that don’t have players at a decent level enough for top tier football, prevent burnout of that one top prospect etc?
Also for clubs that get promoted, they are already facing an uphill battle to avoid relegation.
If they are forced to play youth too, that will make things all the more harder since the bigger clubs will just sign the promising players.
The number of games issue is primarily for clubs in the CL, EL, ECL.
Could just mandate it for teams playing in 4 competitions, or require them to play 2000 minutes and everyone else to play 1000
Increasing squad size and limiting games per player is massively favouring financially wealthy clubs and clubs that are struggling will get absolutely shafted by this.
That would be even worse than continuing with the current way.
Big leagues increasing squad size will make the smaller leagues a lot shitter :(
Imagine City with an even bigger squad
Did you see its bench yesterday? It has one of the smallest squads in the league.
Didnt need to just play the squad player. Wtf ten hag
reduce games played but that will put a dent in the organizer’s pocket so it’s never happening.
People always ignore that the players won’t accept dropping their wages either. It’s just
Manager who doesn’t rotate his first XI when he has the option to is surprised when players get injured.
That’s why the big clubs invest in good substitute players as they need to be rotated. I may get it wrong, but it seems like he is trying to make excuses by blaming the schedule instead of his coaching skill.
Nothing shows the bias of this sub than when a united player/manager says the exact same thing as Liverpool/city/Chelsea.
“Just buy more players” is an absolutely terrible take on an issue pretty much everyone agrees is a problem
The injuries are mad this season.
It’s not just the amount of matches but also the stop start nature of VAR and playing 50-55 minute halves mean it’s becoming a joke.
Every team seems to be having an injury crisis. Limping across the line to the next international break.
Dear ETH, this is not the Dutch league.
Increasing squad size is the way. The governing bodies love money too much to play less games so having more players could go some way to alleviating the stress on players’ bodies.
Imagine City with an even bigger squad
Reducing number of games is the way. Bigger squads will only help the big clubs, whilst the likes of Brighton, Villa and West Ham (or any other team that gets European football) will not be able to keep up with the spend
Agreed. It’s already started to cross the limit of what a referee can handle. That bunda referee tore his ACL yesterday.
is that german or brazilian bunda ref ?
Bunda lmao x
why are you kissing him
Was this stretch from August to December different in 2013, 2003, 1993? Up until this point of the season, I’m failing to see what “extra” games there are.
UEFA will say we need more matches for the fans. 30 more extra PL games in Asia and America
Faster pace and very high press too. Work rate to this gen player is insane.
Ehh
it will reach to a certain point where clubs will purposely throw in the small cup and it turns into which team wanted to lose more.