Official - AVB confirmed as Chelsea boss

[Guest justin_3d]

This thread will meet the legendary heights of 100!

Wow that fast? lol.

Well just to see what all has been going about, the most wanted manager with 76 votes totaling to 38.78% of all votes is Guus Hiddink.

If Guus does get the nod for the next manager in a week or two, that will be the people's choice, and can consider this thread close.

Might happen by the end of the month by Gourlay comments.

[ZanSnake 1,211]

Wow that fast? lol.

Well just to see what all has been going about, the most wanted manager with 76 votes totaling to 38.78% of all votes is Guus Hiddink.

If Guus does get the nod for the next manager in a week or two, that will be the people's choice, and can consider this thread close.

Might happen by the end of the month by Gourlay comments.

By the end of tomorrow, i'll bet this thread would be reaching more than 105 pages :eyebrows:

[Kostas 1,468]

If any of you is interested Raymond Verheijen gave a pretty insightful interview some days ago on fitness coaching. Worth a read. [Link]

Top England youngsters like Jack Wilshere and Andy Carroll would not be burned out if they trained properly with clubs, says fitness expert

Wales No.2 Raymond Verheijen says Gunners' dossier on starlet to demonstrate his susceptibility to injury was based on GPS data with 10 per cent margin of error

EXCLUSIVE

By Wayne Veysey

England will kick off their bid to win the European Under-21 Championship on Sunday without Jack Wilshere and Andy Carroll, two young guns who pulled out pleading burnout as a mitigating circumstance. Yet international coach and fitness guru Raymond Verheijen has questioned the scientific application of performance data used by Arsenal to demonstrate why Wilshere should not play and he also explained how Carroll should be joining the likes of Jordan Henderson, Phil Jones, Denmark's Christian Eriksson, Switzerland's Xherdan Shaqiri and Spain's David De Gea in the tournament.

Verheijen, the current Wales assistant manager and freelance football conditioning expert, said the GPS system used by Arsenal and other Premier League clubs to track the ground covered by players in training and matches is flawed because it has an error margin of around 10 per cent.

The Dutchman believes this highlights a wider problem with coaching in the UK, where a lack of education about football fitness means the same mistakes are being perpetuated.

Wilshere has played 54 competitive games for club and country this season but Verheijen stresses that exhaustion should not have prevented him from featuring in the tournament.

In an exclusive interview with Goal.com, he said: "Everyone will agree that playing in a tournament at the end of the season is not ideal but it is not impossible. A lot of people blame the number of games but if players were trained gradually in pre-season instead of building up fitness in two to three weeks by running players into the ground they would be fit and fresh at the end of the season.

"If you exhaust players even before the first Premier League game it is ridiculous. The players are already carrying fatigue within their bodies. Once the Premier League starts there is no way you can get rid of the fatigue.

Double Dutch | Verheijen has worked with Guus Hiddink at Chelsea, South Korea and Russia

"They should start the Premier League fresh and then all you have to do during the season is recover from games. Then, 60 games is no problem. If you have already lost your freshness before the start of the season you will not last that long during the season. You will hit the red zone too early."

Arsenal assembled a dossier of GPS information to paint an alarming picture to Wilshere of how he had reached a tipping point and was at the risk of injury if he participated in the Under-21 competition.

However, Verheijen is not convinced by the system. "GPS is inaccurate," he explained. "The error of measurement is at least 10 per cent. If the system says 1km then it can always be 900m or 1.1km.

"I work at the highest level and I would never accept an error margin of 10 per cent. That doesn't fit with top sport. I only want to measure facts and not assumptions. 'Yeah, you made around 60 sprints'. No. 'You made 55 sprints'. I think GPS must increase its accuracy first before it is used at the highest level."

"Carroll would have gained fitness from playing the Euro and then in three weeks off would lose only a little fitness and gain freshness"

Verheijen says GPS compares unfavourably with a more expensive performance measurement system called Immotio, which is used by AC Milan, Bayern Munich, Ajax and PSV Eindhoven.

He said: "With GPS you only measure one to five measurements per second in terms of locating a player on the pitch. People use it because it is portable and cheaper and they can take it from one pitch to another. Immotio is 1,000 measurements per second. But it is not portable and, obviously, accuracy costs more money.

"In Holland we did an experiment with four different brands of GPS. One player was wearing all four systems at the same time and we had four different results. GPS only works properly with linear movement. Football is a lot of turning and twisting. Accuracy of GPS goes down with non-linear movement.

"All these so-called sports science experts in football would rather have a cheaper and portable system than an accurate system. Everyone can draw their own conclusions from that."

Verheijen, whose CV includes spells with the South Korea, Holland and Russia national teams as well as Barcelona, Chelsea, Manchester City, Zenit Saint Petersburg and the Dutch FA, is the most vocal supporter of periodisation, a 'less is more' training philosophy geared to getting players football fit rather than, say, marathon fit.

While Verheijen pointed out that he would not have selected Wilshere for the Under-21s for a different reason because the Arsenal midfielder has become an established member of the senior team, he feels Carroll, who has two England caps from friendly matches, is a different case as he is lower in the hierarchy.

The striker was in and out of the Liverpool team with various ailments in the final weeks of a season in which he featured in 31 matches.

"Wilshere could have played the Euro so Carroll could definitely have played the Euro," he said. "His fitness was high enough to play Premier League in the last few weeks and months. He would actually have benefited from the Euro in terms of further fitness development after his long-term injury.

"Then all Liverpool would have to do is deal with him properly after his return. Play the Euro, three weeks off and then a gradual pre-season. Carroll would have gained fitness from playing the Euro and then in three weeks off would lose only a little fitness and gain freshness. All you have to do in pre-season is integrate him slowly back into the Liverpool first team.

"After a tournament in the summer players already have more than enough fitness in pre-season and they should focus on freshness, which is the opposite to what players normally do after a four to six week off-season. After a Euro players don't need conditioning sessions or two sessions per day in pre-season. It is about ideal periodisation. Quality instead of quantity."

Triple-whammy | Verheijen prepared South Korea in 2002, 2006 and 2010 World Cup finals

Verheijen, whose prospective career was cut short by a hip injury at 17, studied exercise physiology and sports psychology at the Free University, Amsterdam, where his thesis became the book Conditioning for Soccer, which has become a template for the Dutch FA coaching course.

The 39-year-old, who has a Uefa A coaching licence and his own coaching academy in Holland with Guus Hiddink and Marco van Basten, argues that too many fitness coaches are not from a football background, which he sees as a particular problem in this country.

"In a lot of countries planning of training by football coaches is of a higher level than in the UK," he explained. "Coaches in the UK should be educated to plan their football sessions properly. What you see is that in terms of fitness they all have a fitness coach and they say to them, 'you are responsible for fitness and I'm responsible for football'.

"In Holland, almost every head coach is responsible for periodisation. They are responsible for the planning of all their sessions. They are able to have a deeper understanding of the physical consequences of their technical sessions.

"Because I had to stop playing at an early age I'm a frustrated football player who studied physiology, which is more effective than all those fitness coaches from outside football who try to study football. and the frustration was what drove me to become a coach. The problem in football is you have sports scientists who have general knowledge about conditioning but they don't understand the football context they work in. Everyone can go to university and study physiology. Not everyone can study football and develop a deeper understanding of the unwritten rules in football."

Verheijen believes more ambitious ex-players who want to work at the top level of coaching should go back to school.

"Not everyone can become a first-team manager but these people still have the ambition to work at the highest level.

"What they should do is become a specialist in periodisation or psychology or another area. That's a great chance for these people to work at a big club as an assistant coach.

"Of course, sports scientists won't like this approach and maybe even see it as a threat. But if a former football player goes through the same university and studies for four years, why would he not be as good as a sports scientist? There is no reason.

"Two years ago, I did a presentation of the FA pro-licence in Coventry. I had lunch before my presentation and saw Gareth Southgate, who was at that stage in his fourth year in the Premier League. I said to the person of the FA, 'Is Gareth also presenting on this course?' He said, 'No, he is one of the students'. I said, 'What? How can you be a Premier League manager without a pro licence?' Would you be allowed to drive in England without a driving licence? The pro licence has only existed for eight to 10 years in England, which tells you everything you need to know."

Attitudes in England vary considerably from Verheijen's native Holland, which he considers "the leader in coach education". Renowned former players must work their way up the coaching ladder before landing the plum jobs, as Frank de Boer and Phillip Cocu have recently done, and as Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Dennis Bergkamp intend to do. The first step on the ladder for each of them has been coaching the Under-13s at their respective clubs.

Verheijen repeatedly bangs the drum on his Twitter account about the need for coaches to accumulate knowledge and then be responsible for the players under their care.

"People can't apply what they don't know. Because of the gaps in coach education people from outside football jump into the gaps and coaches don't have expertise in areas such as fitness and don't feel responsible for injuries. That is what I constantly try to explain on Twitter.

"I already predict that in the upcoming pre-season all these English teams will be running up and down the pitch or the hill and on the first day back coaches will have players on one or two-mile runs. That is still the level of conditioning in this country. Running players into the ground is prehistoric," he added.

Little wonder, then, that England are shown up as the dinosaurs of European football every two years on the big stage.

[Henrique 9,133]

Guss Hiddink's chances of leaving his post as Turkey manager to take over at Chelsea have increased after the Turkish FA’s president Mahmut Ozgener said he was stepping down.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2003599/Guus-Hiddink-moves-closer-Chelsea-job.html#ixzz1PIetYmfq

[termninja 5,290]

I'm really looking forward to Raymond Verheijen at our club. Our older players could really use his expertize on fitness.

[zolayes 14,489]

I'm really looking forward to Raymond Verheijen at our club. Our older players could really use his expertize on fitness.

and Im dreading the thought of Hughes ...

[ack17 205]

GUUS HIDDINK WILL 'NOT QUIT TURKEY FOR CHELSEA

[termninja 5,290]

It's up to us now to negotiate with the Turks and buy of his contract.

[xPetrCechx 13,563]

GUUS HIDDINK WILL 'NOT QUIT TURKEY FOR CHELSEA

[LDN Blue 7,903]

GUUS HIDDINK WILL 'NOT QUIT TURKEY FOR CHELSEA

Misleading.

His agent said the president's decision not to run again has no influence on Hiddink's decision. The Express have made up that quote in the title.

Edit: It's worth noting, Gourlay & Van Nieuwenhuizen (Hiddink's agent) are both in Asia right now.

Edited June 15, 2011 by LDN Blue

[Tomo 21,733]

Guus wont quit Turkey because he is a good man who has pride, honour and dignity and i respect him for that i really do!!!!!

Why cant we just pay the four fucking million?

[LDN Blue 7,903]

Why cant we just pay the four fucking million?

But wouldn't that be the same thing as him quitting?

[Tomo 21,733]

Didn't Hiddink say back in 2009 that the squad needed a overhaul? if so his return can only be good news as far as thats concerned.

[Guest justin_3d]

I still think Guus can come to Chelsea and hold a dual role for the time being.

His next qualifier for Turkey is not a long time, so if he does not qualified them he can just quit Turkey.

Just let Guus coach Chelsea and Turkey for the time being.

[Tomo 21,733]

I still think Guus can come to Chelsea and hold a dual role for the time being.

His next qualifier for Turkey is not a long time, so if he does not qualified them he can just quit Turkey.

Just let Guus coach Chelsea and Turkey for the time being.

It worked last time because there was only 2 Russia games during his whole Chelsea stint, the International schedule is hectic at the start of the season, it will never work.

[Guest justin_3d]

It worked last time because there was only 2 Russia games during his whole Chelsea stint, the International schedule is hectic at the start of the season, it will never work.

But doesn't he has like one game left? and then the Euro not till 2012, at which time hes contract will be up.

He can easily get that game done while being at Chelsea...

[robdog 2,084]

GUUS HIDDINK WILL 'NOT QUIT TURKEY FOR CHELSEA

Well now that is out of the way, might as well welcome Michael Emenalo as new gaffer. People were wondering why Don Carlo should remain, well this situation is showing why that would have been a wise decision. Cheers!!!

[Tomo 21,733]

But doesn't he has like one game left? and then the Euro not till 2012, at which time hes contract will be up.

He can easily get that game done while being at Chelsea...

If they do qualify he will have to balance a potential treble pursuit with preparing for the Euro's, Guus may be a great manager but he isn't superman.