30-10-2014, 21:24
Yes, I'd agree with that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Irvine actually used the word "tired", did he? He just said that some players were "feeling the effects", which I'd interpret to mean that they didn't feel they could give 100% for ninety minutes on both Tuesday and Saturday without losing a bit of pace and sharpness. People bring up the Sixties and Seventies all the time in these kind of arguments, talking about the days when players had to play 500 games a season with two broken legs, etc, but the fact is that all teams then had the same handicap, and the wider spread of quality in a division meant that a team might not suffer so much from one player having an off-day. In the modern Premier League, these fine margins are punished ruthlessly.
To phrase that in Steve's analogy, the postman may run for three hours a day, but if his job was reliant on him being faster than vicious dogs which chase him for breakfast, and one day he felt that he couldn't match his usual dog-beating pace, raising the risk that he could be injured and off-work for a long time, and thus jeopardising the status of his post office branch which might get closed down as a result, is he then justified in having a day to recuperate?
To phrase that in Steve's analogy, the postman may run for three hours a day, but if his job was reliant on him being faster than vicious dogs which chase him for breakfast, and one day he felt that he couldn't match his usual dog-beating pace, raising the risk that he could be injured and off-work for a long time, and thus jeopardising the status of his post office branch which might get closed down as a result, is he then justified in having a day to recuperate?
"I would rather spend a holiday in Tuscany than in the Black Country, but if I were compelled to choose between living in West Bromwich or Florence, I should make straight for West Bromwich." - J.B. Priestley