In what would appear to be an ever-growing rift between Liverpool manager, Brendan Rodgers, and England manager, Roy Hodgson, the latter has come out after his comments yesterday about Raheem Sterling’s fatigue to question the training methods of Brendan Rodgers. Specifically, the medically recommended two-day recovery period.
“We have never had any problems with [Liverpool’s training methods] but I don’t think there is a lot of medical evidence to support the two-day recovery so, if you want to, you might want to research that.”
First off,
WebMD: Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness – Ease Those Aching Muscles
Not as scientific, but there’s a basic consensus growing.
I could honestly go on. That was just me searching on Google quickly. I don’t have physios at my disposal or a team of sports scientists. Just Google. Or Bing, if you’re weird. All the same, Liverpool were inclined to respond, although indirectly, to Hodgson’s comments. In an interview with the Liverpool website, first team coach Mike Marsh explained the team’s fitness program.
“Our fitness prgrammes have been well documented. We try to recover the players as best we can to prepare for the game. We have a couple days’ recovery after the game and we work with the group of players for the next game. We do quite a lot of analysis with the players so we break them up into smaller groups and feed back in different ways”
Ryland Morgans, Liverpool’s head of fitness and conditioning, also gave an interview earlier this year where he discussed these individual training programs more in depth.
“All players follow an individual plan off the grass. Each player is different so elements such as age, playing position, injury background, strengths and weaknesses, are all considered when putting these plans together.”
These people see the players daily and know them very well. They are using cutting edge sports science to analyse the players closely. So tell me why you wouldn’t follow their suggestions when you borrow them for a week? You’re like the kid that would borrow you toys, break them, and then blame the toy for not being strong enough to withstand rough play. Nobody liked that kid, Roy. Now, when people start calling you out on it, you directly question their coach’s training methods? Training methods that have kept previously injury prone Steve Gerrard and Daniel Sturridge fit for large swaths of the season? You’re just twisting the dagger in a fight nobody else knew was happening.
