90sSpursBook
Erik Edman
In fact Wanyama missed the first month of the season through injury and Lamela and Winks didn't play at Saudi Sportswashing Machine (both played the following week v Fulham) so would have been Luke Amos or Oliver Skipp in that XI. At that point Foyth hadn't started a PL game and Sissoko was thought of in the same bracket as Jason dozzell.
In a usual pre-season players would have 4-6 weeks break and then come back in first week of July and then have 6 weeks before playing first competitive game of the season. In 2018 of those involved in the world cup:
Sonny (final game was) 27th June (then had the clusterfudge of the asian games to contend with)
Eriksen 1st July
Sanchez 3rd July
All england/Belgium/france players - 14 July
I know that the Euro's or World CUp take place every other year but you can't legislate for so many players to be involved for so long especially in a summer when the PL started again on 11 August. I guess this is now just another challenge for club coaches to manage.
If we had kept the world cup players back you then would have a situation where we had two sets of players at very different levels of fitness and conditioning - again I'm guessing but it might have taken 6 weeks to calibrate both sets of players training regimes. Poch might conceibavly have decided this was the best option for the greater good of each invidiual player's season-long condition but it would have had an almighty effect on the results in the first half of the season where traditionally is where we drop a lot of points and find ourselves playing catch up.
It was always going to be an absolute clusterfudge of a season for this reason alone so I can fully understand why the top 4 finish has ended up being such an endurance.
In a usual pre-season players would have 4-6 weeks break and then come back in first week of July and then have 6 weeks before playing first competitive game of the season. In 2018 of those involved in the world cup:
Sonny (final game was) 27th June (then had the clusterfudge of the asian games to contend with)
Eriksen 1st July
Sanchez 3rd July
All england/Belgium/france players - 14 July
I know that the Euro's or World CUp take place every other year but you can't legislate for so many players to be involved for so long especially in a summer when the PL started again on 11 August. I guess this is now just another challenge for club coaches to manage.
If we had kept the world cup players back you then would have a situation where we had two sets of players at very different levels of fitness and conditioning - again I'm guessing but it might have taken 6 weeks to calibrate both sets of players training regimes. Poch might conceibavly have decided this was the best option for the greater good of each invidiual player's season-long condition but it would have had an almighty effect on the results in the first half of the season where traditionally is where we drop a lot of points and find ourselves playing catch up.
It was always going to be an absolute clusterfudge of a season for this reason alone so I can fully understand why the top 4 finish has ended up being such an endurance.