And yet 10k over 90 minutes is still not very much. Even amateur runners who aren't part of a club, the kind who wake up every morning and go for a jog before work, will break 10k in 40 minutes.The top distances covered in football is akin to doing speed 9 on a treadmill for 90mins, which is piss-easy for the averge under-30, never mind peak-condition atheletes. Lets not even mention the amount of walking within a game too. It's more the intermittent sprints which might be a problem. Going 90% flat out and then walking a bit, 80% sprint then walking, 100% then walking...could be why there are more muscle pulls. Maybe they're getting injured from not moving enough! Lazy gits and wimps.
Mate, it doesn't really matter how easy it is to run 13k in 90 minutes, our players can probably all smash distance/time runs on treadmills. We've got one of the fittest teams around. The point is that today's players are covering nearly twice as much ground as players in the 80's, goodness knows what it was in the 60's and 70's. It's just one aspect I thought where a correlation could be made.
the pitches are largely the same size right? Maybe the uefa standard is slightly bigger but not much. There are 11men still So all this extra distance is not steady pace is it? Its higher vase level at times but its sprints that are longer and fast and more of them that drives the extra distance So sure 11km in 60mins is an easy job for a lot of people but go do a 90min circuit training where you have to compete with others physically for space and stop and start all the time and still run 11km. The ball is in play less than half the blooming time!
I tend to agree. I remember Gerry Byrne played almost the whole of the 1965 cup final with a broken collarbone - can't imagine that happening today. The culture has changed drastically since those days - apart from the disgraceful habit of feigning injury to get other players censured players seem to overreact to the slightest pain. I must stress though that not all players are prone to either of these things. I accept the points that the tempo of the game might contribute, and that clubs are probably concerned about protecting their precious assets, but the amount of falling over and writhing in apparent agony, only to spring up and sprint away if nothing's given is embarrassing. I often think of the buffeting a player will get during a goal celebration, and if an opponent did that to them they'd be out for six weeks.
I think also whilst the distance covered during 90 mins has increased, the number of sprints has increased. Sprints, which involves explosive acceleration from a stand still position, combined with moving in different directions so quickly could be a contributing factor.
hard grounds account for a lot of the problems as many of todays pitches are like concrete where as in the "good old days" many were more like swamps.
Yeh I just read his comment again, tbf I was in the middle of something so I wasn't concentrating properly. That'll learn me
Seem to remember in the 70's we did a whole season using just 13 players and it may even have been a title winning season where as now we use more than that most games
In the old, old days subs weren't allowed unless it was for a bad injury so not many were used at all which goes back to saint's original point, why were there so few injuries?
I've been waiting for mito's analytical brain to get going on researching the types of injuries showing % of contact injuries vs trauma vs pull-up injuries and such like.
Jimmy might well be the statistician but you are the analyst. There is a difference. Jimmy can provide the bones but you put the meat on them. Speaking of stats, has anyone heard from astro?
