Players Fitness

[Steve 10,227]

Looking towards the opening game of the season, i think it is going to be very interesting to see how fit some of our lads are. A fair few of our players have taken place in the World Cup and are going to be very tired. Reported on the Chelsea website, Essien and Mikel are both coming along very well and are doing double training sessions, which is very positive news. No reports as of yet to do with Boss.

To be honest i am more worried about some of the players who have taken part in the World Cup. They are going to get hardly any rest and are basically going straight back into pre-season. Its going to be interesting to see how they guys are fairing come November and December when Fatigue starts to kick in.

Lets just pray that we don't have another injury packed year!

[Madmax 9,219]

I've been reading some of the reports over on the official site and I've noticed how they've described our pre-season training as being more fitness-centric right now, with a view to make it more technical and football oriented after a while. This should suit our WC returning players. Right now we have Ess, Mikel, Cech, Zhirkov, Alex, Bena and the youngsters training and they are the ones who require fitness training more than the WC players who've been away training with their national teams throughout the off season. I guess once the WC players return, it will be more football oriented to help them get comfortable on the ball, perfect their touch, etc. I think this is very smart. Fitness training for the non WC players and then technical and tactical training for both non WC players and WC players once the latter set returns.

Aside from training, I hope we don't over-exert the likes of Lamps and Drogba in the pre-season friendlies. I don't want to see them start every game like they did last season. Not only do you want to avoid them injuring themselves, these games should be used by Carlo to check the progress of the ones who don't play regularly. We mustn't forget that we play one more game than the rest of the clubs and that is the Community Shield, and our top players will play in that anyway.

[NoFear 23]

Good points Madmax... ^^

I think Carlo's going to have do a lot of rotation during the first 3 months to keep everyone fit... Esp the likes of Drogba who has often said that a good pre-season is what gets him firing... Fingers crossed none of our players get injured in these friendlies...

[Rambo 1,729]

God forbid Essien to miss any matches this year.

[Rubber bullets 1,183]

ApparentlyEssien and Mikel will be fit for the first PL match against WBA

[Duppy Conqueror 1,451]

it should work out alright for us for two main reasons...

1) none of our players went that far in the WC with their national teams

2)we have a relatively easy start to the season until we meet Man City at the end of September...we should get maximum points up until then without playing our best starting 11..

i think it will effect other teams across europe more..in particular Barcelona,Real & Bayern..