WHY LIVERPOOL ARE NOW IN GOOD SHAPE Tuesday December 11,2012
By Paul Joyce
Liverpool's Glen Johnson benefits from his new fitness regime ONE OF the first points made to Brendan Rodgers when he took charge at Liverpool was that victories such as Sunday’s notable triumph against West Ham would not be possible.
Not because Sam Allardyce’s side was expected to tear it up in the Premier League. Rather that one of the main performers, Glen Johnson, who opened the scoring with a blistering drive in the 3-2 win, would not be available for selection.
Rodgers was told it was highly unlikely Johnson could play three matches in a week, as he has just done.
Steven Gerrard and Daniel Agger would also struggle to make repeat appearances.
Game by game the myth is being dismantled.
The art of management is governed by player availability and as Liverpool display the green shoots of recovery following a difficult start to the campaign, another piece in the jigsaw is being put in place.
Agger is enjoying his best run of Premier League appearances. The only match he has not started this season was due to suspension.
Gerrard is the only player to feature for every minute of every league game and Johnson, in the form of his life, is now playing midweek matches, as was the case against Udinese in the Europa League last Thursday.
The improvement is not down to luck. Liverpool’s medical team, which includes Glen Driscoll as head of performance, have improved how they protect and condition players.
Instead of pulling players out of games, the idea is to manage their recovery better which is achieved, in one instance, by modifying training sessions using small spaces rather than full-scale pitches.
“You can easily prevent injury by wrapping your players in cotton wool and not letting them play games, but that isn’t the point,” said Driscoll, who first worked with Rodgers at Reading before joining him at Chelsea, Swansea and now Anfield.
“For Steven, Dan and Glen it was a simple process of looking back at every soft tissue injury, hamstring and calf strains are examples] that they had over the past two seasons and going through the process of analysing their training and recovery between matches and before each injury.
“Steven, for example, covers 120metres a minute in a game and in training previously he was hitting 90m a minute.
He is currently performing to 30 per cent of his average speed and only 10 per cent of his highintensity distance in the training sessions before matches, compared to when he got those previous injuries, which aids his recovery and reduces fatigue in preparation.
“In pre-season, we did say with confidence to Steven that we could keep him fit and recover him better, so that he could have another three or four years playing at a high level if he wanted.”
It may seem that Liverpool are divulging some of their secrets.
Another area looked at has been the removal of gym work on certain days because it does not aid recovery.
Yet the reality is that without Rodgers’ own understanding of the process, and willingness to embrace it, the facts and figures would be largely redundant.
“Controlling the extrinsic causes of injuries means controlling the training on the football pitch and understanding that it is all down to space, numbers of players and duration,” said Driscoll, who is aided by physio Chris Morgan and Ryland Morgans, another recruit from Swansea who is head of fi tness and conditioning.
“In football drills these decisions allow you to either protect or condition footballers. When to place these sessions in context to your next or previous match is the key.
“Many sport scientists don’t understand this, let alone managers. Some do but don’t have the influence to affect the management and their training.
“The beauty here is we have a manager who not only gets it but manipulates it as part of his own methods to achieve success and protect players from injury.
“The manager is aware that each player has a threshold level and if he goes above that threshold then the probability of injury in the next match rises.”
Players such as Luis Suarez, who only ever seems to miss games due to suspension, are regarded as being “relatively unbreakable”.
Others need more careful handling. The fact both groups are playing together shows the progress being made.
