Hughton: “It’s about keeping players fit”.
Posted on January 22nd, 2010 | 123 Comments |
So far, with a few exeptions, Hughton has managed to largely buck the trend, despite playing a longer season in a supposedly more ‘physical’ league. However, despite some clever rotational policies and the use of loan players by the Cockney Colossus, there have been some players who have proved to be indispensible to the cause this season, players such as Jose Enrique, Fabricio Coloccini, Alan Smith and leading goalscorer, Kevin Nolan.
Hughton said on the challenge:
“It’s about keeping players fit.
“When you look at the squad, we’ve got a lot of players who have played a lot of games.
“They’re good, tough individuals.
“We have a lot of players who will continue to play a lot of games, but the thing we need to guard against is injuries. If we get them at any stage, we’ll be stretched.
Burnley.
Hughton then moved on to the example of Burnley last season, who reached the semi-finals of the Carling Cup and the last sixteen of the FA Cup, playing a 61 game season in the process despite having a relatively small squad of players. He said:
“There is a possibility to work the two together, and Burnley certainly did it last season, but they wouldn’t be the only team.
“There’ll have been numerous teams with smaller squads which have gone on to have good cup runs, and show good league form.”
“Lady Luck”.
However, despite careful management of the squad, Hughton did acknowledge that sometimes, pure luck has an important role to play too.
“It’s something that’s said, but the reality with injuries, is that Lady Luck plays a massive part.
“If I look at Arsenal – who have just gone top of the league – they’ve having a good season, despite having so many injuries.
“It’s about Lady Luck, but we like to think we’ve done well with the training and medical structure here.”
The recent defensive signings for the club, ex-loanee, Danny Simpson, and now Mike Williamson from Portsmouth should provide some much needed defensive cover. It should also be remembered that young Hungarian starlet, Tamas Kadar is a left footed player who is as adept in the left-back position as he is in the middle. In other areas, Fabrice Pancrate was also brought in for the problematic right wing position, with the team having a dearth of players who could be described as ‘true’ widemen on that side of the pitch.
Time will tell on what other players will be brought in as reinforcements in the remainder of the January transfer window.
NUFCBlog Author: workyticket
workyticket has written 1095 articles on this blog.
Is Williamson confirmed yet?
We have been amazingly lucky with injuries but I wonder how much of that is down to the personality of the players we have now?
As for squad sizes, our’s is probably one of the biggest. We certainly have more players with experience that we can call on. Most of the other teams in this league have a core 12-13 players and youth beyond them.