Head coach focuses on football over running. Sean OâDriscoll is known for his passing style so itâs no surprise that the footballs will be out to welcome the players on their first day back for pre-season. It seems gone are the days where players are sent on cross country runs and endurance tests. âYou can still run with the ball,â quipped the City head coach, speaking to bcfc.co.uk. âWeâll have the footballs out from today. The days are gone when you do all the fitness work from the first day of pre-season. âIf you play the first game and everyone is breathing heavily after just ten minutes then you have to think they havenât really been doing the right thing over the summer months. âIn my pre-season days Iâve got some horror stories about coming back probably as fit as Iâve ever been but then becoming a broken man three days later. âI suffered from sore hamstrings, sore calves, blisters everywhere. I was beasted to death; it didnât make me any fitter, it just broke me down. âThe stats show there are so many injuries in pre-season and you ask, whyâs that? The games really arenât ultra competitive and thatâs because players are over-worked. âItâs about getting that balance right because psychologically players will want to feel theyâve worked hard. Itâs important to have them in good stead physically and mentally for the first game.â
It's a stark contrast to managers like David Moyes and Fabio Capello. Capello reportedly had players vomiting during pre-season training, and Moyes will be bringing his "bootcamps" to Old Trafford to get some of their players into shape. When you get lower down the Football League the football tends to be a lot more physical. Flint will be a powerhouse and should be perfect for League 1, but I worry about some of our younger players and how they'll cope, both with some of our older players and with the rigours of the Football League itself. It's why I'd also like to see us sign a few older (and ideally cheaper) players to replace some of our long-term stays. I'd happily sell Louis Carey and land someone like Dave Kitson, a player who is apparently great with younger players, on a free.
Carey is also supposedly good with the younger players Kitson would effectively be a passenger I can see where we culd use Carey on the field but Kitson a better goalscorer than we already have doubtful he has hardly ever been prolific, nor is he a battering ram making loads of goals for others he relied on movement and a rapid turn of pace in short quick sprints something which he seems to have lost. I'd rather keep Carey and get Simon Church in also on a free who might be able to make goals for Baldock or Davies
In his time, Kitson was deadly, pretty much unplayable and it seemed could score almost at will but that was a long time ago whereas watching him play for Sheff Utd at the end of last season, he very much looked like a player who had lost his mojo
