Over the past few months, Paul Jewell has proven himself to be a manager that doesn't like to change the team to keep it fresh over the course of a season. He prefers to play a settled line up week in-week out - and while this is a sentiment that many fans seem to agree with - I think this is the wrong way to manage a squad over a long and arduous season. Gone are the days of 'pick your best XI', 'you can't change a winning team' etc. when you see that footballers now cover twice the distance they did in the 80's and early 90's and at a much higher intensity.
The 2011/12 season at Ipswich Town has been one of runs of form - 3 defeats on the spin, one loss in 8, 7 defeats on the bounce, back to back wins, 2 points out of 18 and more recently 24 points in our last 12. This shows a huge lack of consistency and also in my mind that we are a confidence team….capable of Championship winning form over a sustained period, but also of relegation form with the same set of players.
I personally think one of the main reasons for the change of fortune in our runs can be something as simple as the fact that the players are tired. In the Premiership the top teams rotate heavily to help them through a 38 game season, but yet this habit does not seem to have found it's way down to the Championship where 46 games are played in the same time period with the same international breaks.
To veer away from Ipswich for a bit, Spurs have had their title challenge effectively ended in recent weeks, the media can't seem to fathom why, but over the Christmas period I was speaking to a colleague who predicted this, in the 4 game period over Christmas, Redknapp did not change the team - and the players looked shattered. Now in order for them to play their high intensity game they are not fit enough to do it - once a player is gone, it takes almost a 2 week window for them to regain full fitness - if they are managed properly over busy periods this can be avoided.
I think Ipswich are a similar team to Tottenham, when we have been at our best in both good runs in the season, it has been when playing the game at a high intensity and tempo and overpowering opposition. Last nights game clearly showed this, in the first half with a slow tempo we were poor. We don't have the patience and technique to keep the ball for long periods of time, Middlesborough were happy to knock it around and wait for an opportunity to present itself. We are the opposite and play a very 'English' game - get the ball forward quickly, run with pace at defenders and try and pcik up second balls in dangerous areas and attack with intensity to make something happen or win a set piece.
This high intensity game has been very succesful, but isn't sustainable if we use the same players week in, week out. In the month of March we have now had 7 games in 24 days. Therefore, with the 4231 formation we are playing, there are 4 attacking spots available for each game and by definition 28 for the games in March - Murphy, Martin, Chopra and Emmanuel-Thomas have occupied 27 of these - with the only change being Jason Scotland in for Lee Martin at Hull.
In the last 3 games, at around the hour mark, Chopra, Martin and Emmanuel-Thomas have tired badly. This was particularly evident last night when at one point Nicky Bailey ran past Chopra like Rio Ferdinand gliding past Micky Quinn!
Lee Martin has arguably been our most important player in the recent good run, and it is hard to make a case for dropping him, but Jewell must realise that we are flogging our players and without sufficient recovery time between matches they will not recover - I'd be surprised if any of that front 4 fire on all cylinders between now and the end of the season.
In March, our two attacking midfield players not currently starting, Josh Carson and Ryan Stevenson, have played approximately 90 minutes football between them. Taking away from the fact it is good to see an Academy graduate like Carson play more, I struggle to see that the team would have been sufficiently weakened by given Carson and Stevenson 3 starts in this period to allow the key players to rest. It could have worked along that way that either Carson or Stevenson started - and one of the first choice 4 was given a rest to recover. Murphy clearly appreciated the total rest he was given for the Blackpool game as his best form of the season followed this.
Squad rotation is seen as a dirty word in football but with the intensity the game is played at these days it is vital that the team is kept fresh. A huge squad isn't required to do this, a defence shouldn't rotate as these players cover less ground and have less need to have explosive pace, and greater natural rest periods during the game. We have looked more defensively solid when relationships have been able to be built and rotating at the back four is a recipe for disaster.
Using last nights game as an example, a key player who looked the freshest at the 90 minute mark was Grant Leadbitter, he had an enforced rest on Saturday, but would he have been able to make the run to score his goal yesterday with 90 minutes on Saturday under his belt? We'll obviously never know, but he looked good for a rest, whereas Lee Bowyer looked leggy from around 30 minutes in having played 3 games in 6 days.
In order to rotate a squad, you need around 10 midfield and attacking players, with this it allows you to make 2 or 3 changes a game to ensure that everyone is kept fresh, and it doesn't end up like earlier in the season where both Chopra and Scotland were tired and Ellington and Emmanuel-Thomas came out of the lurch with no match sharpness and looked poor and were subsequently dropped - this isn't rotation, it is dropping/resting players. Jewell's use (or lack) of substitutions also doesn't help the matter, in the last 2 home games both Emmanuel-Thomas and Chopra have looked knackered for the last 15 minutes but been left on when there has been a spare sub to use and allow them a break to begin recovery for next game.
I think we have the 10 midfield and attacking players in: Bowyer, Drury, Leadbitter, Hyam, Murphy, Martin, Emmanuel-Thomas, Carson, Chopra and Stevenson (Scotland deliberately excluded due to contract restrictions). And with these players, if the squad is managed properly, all 10 will be able to stay match fit without being burned out by playing 8 games in a month.
Unfortunately for this season, I think the squad rotation ship has sailed, and unless key players can be given a 10-14 day rest they will not be able to hit the heights of their best performance. Hopefully Paul Jewell spends time talking to Sir Alex Ferguson this summer, who is the master of rotation - he has openly admitted that he knows the XI he will be playing 4-5 games in advance in order to ensure everyone is fit to play and peaking. They do have a bigger squad than us, but it could be argued that he is top of the league with a relatively poor squad when compared to their rivals. If Jewell can embrace rotation and do it effectively, I think it will give us a huge advantage next season.
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