Sevco is back in pre-season training.
I say that in case you missed it. In case you’ve not been tuned to the television bulletins or seen the acres of coverage of it in the papers.
The Love-A-Thon is in full swing now, alright.
Newspapers editors are drooling like hopeless fanboys as St Gerrard holds court at the pressers.
It’s enough to give you the boak.
But as Phil says often, this is only good until games have to be played. That’s when the coach and four turns into a bunch of mice and a pumpkin.
There is literally nothing new about any of this, except for the faces involved. Everything that is coming out of Ibrox mouths has been said before and before and before from other Ibrox mouths. It’s the mouths over there that seem to get stronger, and fitter, every single year.
Under Warburton that was the headline; “stronger, fitter, faster” and we heard from everyone at Ibrox, from the players to the tea boy, just how good they were going to be. Caixinha preached discipline. Double training sessions. Early starts. The press was full of nonsense about how no team would be able to match them for stamina.
In the meantime, Brendan and his coaches got on with it.
The mouths didn’t get much exercise, but the players were able to raise their games for every major match of the campaign. When it mattered, we performed. At Ibrox, with ten men, we ran them ragged. They were a spent force long before the end. All this talk … means nothing.
They think it will be different because it’s Gerrard. They think he will raise the players to his own level of fitness, of professionalism, of excellence. Hey if was that easy we wouldn’t need technical coaches at all, just fitness fanatics, robots in white t-shirts like the PT instructors from Hell. Being able to run all day long doesn’t make you a better passer of the ball and in order to attain that level of fitness in the first place you have to go through 100 kinds of exhaustion.
Gerrard thinks he’s still at Liverpool, at a massive club with that mentality woven into it. With a mind-set and a culture that only signs the right calibre of individual – playing skill is only one measure of how a team judges signings – and insists on the right standards of living. He’s not. He’s at Sevco. He’s so far bought only players from lesser clubs and lower leagues … there is not a Olivier Ntcham or a Moussa Dembele amongst them.
As far as I’m concerned their tongues can do all the heavy lifting they can handle.
There are all kinds of fitness; one kind is about a state of mind, and I know we’ve got that covered because we’re a team full of winners. Beyond the talk these Peepul are going to have to perform on the park. Out there, just talking a good game will not save them.