PRE-SEASON BEGINS! Posted on: Mon 09 Jul 2012 Pre-season training gets underway today at QPR's Harlington training ground as the squad prepare for another season in the Premier League. The players will be weighed and measured this morning before heading out onto the pitch in the afternoon to commence a week of intensive training prior to Friday's trip to Asia. After their heroics last term to remain in the top flight, Mark Hughes and his coaches plan to instil good habits from the off to ensure they don't find themselves embroiled in another relegation scrap. Incredibly, this is the first time in three seasons that Hughes and Co. have been in place for a pre-season campaign, after joining Fulham at the end of July in 2010 and taking over at Loftus Road in January this year. Assistant Manager Mark Bowen told www.qpr.co.uk this morning: "I am really looking forward to it. "Pre-season has certainly changed but it's changed for the better. "Back in the day there were a lot of muscle pulls and a lot of blisters. You'd be back in training for a few days and players would be dropping like flies! Hopefully that's not the case anymore. "When we were all playing there was a certain way of doing things but sports science has moved it on from there. "A lot of our training and what we do with the players is dependent on advice from the sports science department, in terms of the intensity of the work that we give them." The squad will no doubt be delighted to see the footballs will be out from day one, with endless running not on the agenda. "For the want of a better phrase, it's a little bit in the past to not have the footballs involved early and we will certainly have them out from today," Bowen added. "What we aim to do over the coming weeks is get players into good habits and show them how we work. "Although we have been in the building a little while now, we were a little bit restricted in what we could do last season. "The situation when we came in was that we had to get points on the board. "At times we weren't able to work in the way that we wanted to because we realised the group weren't used to us, and the intensity we train at. "But we will be looking to get that in-built in the squad during this period and hopefully that will carry on into the season when it kicks off. "Last season it almost felt like we were spinning plates, just trying to keep the players going. Now we can implement our philosophy about how we want to work."
One of the things that has me feeling so confident is the fact that they've deliberately sorted out as much as possible before now (and trying to finalise pretty much everything else this week). a) It shows that we're not being held over a barrel and b) it gives us the optimal pre-season. I'm also interested to see the full plan in terms of what Bowen says about the right habbits and simply plugging the short term gaps last season. Done the right way but I guess they believe there's even more to come from the existing players.
I hope so. It would be good to see the likes of Akos and Smith achieve in the Prem following on from Hill and Derry.
Looks like Adel has been eating all the pies again... http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?hl=e...=113&start=0&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0,i:116
