I speculate that it is true, although you might have to define 'training' as the regime for players returning from injury won't necessarily be the same intensity.
@our_frank It's a wonder to me that the practice leaves a sour taste in people's mouths, but I find a lot of people wondrous. To me it seems obvious that keeping player condition confidential makes the opposition's job harder, so then it's just a question of whether people value their own idle curiosity over the club's competitive prospects. Clearly many people do value their own idle curiosity foremost in these instances, my own idle curiosity makes me wonder how they correlate against those who complain when the club does not achieve the required result evert match - that's a Venn diagram I would enjoy seeing.
Well said, Ed. I deal with a lot of clubs in my job and believe me, getting injury news out of most managers is like getting blood out of a stone. As I said on a different thread, I genuinely don’t understand why some supporters get so worked up about it. If we announced today that McCleary was fit/unfit to play on Saturday it would certainly help Portsmouth in their preparations but what difference would it make to Wycombe fans?
@Ed_ said: @our_frank It's a wonder to me that the practice leaves a sour taste in people's mouths, but I find a lot of people wondrous. To me it seems obvious that keeping player condition confidential makes the opposition's job harder, so then it's just a question of whether people value their own idle curiosity over the club's competitive prospects. Clearly many people do value their own idle curiosity foremost in these instances, my own idle curiosity makes me wonder how they correlate against those who complain when the club does not achieve the required result evert match - that's a Venn diagram I would enjoy seeing.
Seems to have changed in recent years though, or has it always been kept confidential?
It won’t help Portsmouth in the slightest. Danny Cowley has got significantly greater problems than knowing whether Garath McCleary is fit or not. Furthermore, knowing he is playing is a very different matter to knowing how to stop him playing. I have lost count of the number of times opposition managers have said they know how we play and yet still haven’t been able to stop us. It is a wholly spurious argument. It is a wonder to me that so many people fall for it.
@ReturnToSenda said:
Club did say he had a fitness test before Fleetwood, but that felt unlikely considering it looked like a dislocated shoulder.
Interested in where the club said this. Can't find it anywhere?
I'm not fussed on keeping players injury status secret but I do find it annoying if the club actually put out a player is having a fitness test when he isn't close to being fit.
@glasshalfempty said:
It won’t help Portsmouth in the slightest. Danny Cowley has got significantly greater problems than knowing whether Garath McCleary is fit or not. Furthermore, knowing he is playing is a very different matter to knowing how to stop him playing. I have lost count of the number of times opposition managers have said they know how we play and yet still haven’t been able to stop us. It is a wholly spurious argument. It is a wonder to me that so many people fall for it.
You don't think it makes any difference at all to Portsmouth's preparations to know if the best player in the league is playing or not?
Yes, it makes so little difference as to be negligible. They can prepare all they like, it doesn’t mean they’ll be able to stop him. Look how many times teams have tried to stop Bayo. The cream always rises to the top.
Yes ‘handed a fitness test’ is a very odd term of phrase. Perhaps someone walked up to him with one of those folders full of laminates and handed it to him and told him to follow the instructions for the test ?
Hope it was more readily understood than the instructions for the NHS Lateral Flow Test for Covid, free from all reputable pharmacies. Strange turn of phrase indeed.
@eric_plant - is it just Portsmouth who are extremely unlikely to not be privy to inside information on Wycombe or is there a list of clubs who are in the know? Is it just Wycombe that they have infiltrated or is their network more comprehensive? Do Wycombe has a spy network of our own? I suppose with a name like yours, you know a plant when you see one.
@glasshalfempty - You have an interesting view on how unimportant squad selection is. I feel that we are unlikely to find any middle ground here. Given how inconsequential the playing staff seem to be to the outcome of the game, it must indeed feel to you like the club are behaving in a mysterious way.
@peterparrotface - I can't remember the club being open about this information during Ainsworth's tenure, which is now a fairly long time.
@various - it may be that McCleary did indeed have a fitness test prior to the Fleetwood game. In light of the club not publishing the results of his test, perhaps best to not get hopes too high that future fitness tests may auger the return of a player to matchday duty.
Thanks for that @Blue_since_1990. I did wonder. We’ve had our pack for several months. Feeling very much under the weather last week, I thought it sensible to rule out Covid but I didn’t have any of the three main symptoms and, trying to work out what went where/did what, simply exacerbated my general malaise!
Better now and Covid Test pack back in cupboard, unused.
@Ed_ It would be utter nonsense to argue that squad selection is unimportant or that the playing staff are inconsequential to the outcome of any game and at no point have I done so.
There's a lot of non-Covid germs about @micra so we need to carry on taking care. Had my flu jab last week...got me Covid booster this week. Having never bothered with the flu jab until last year...I've carried more vaccines in my system over the past two years than I did for the whole of the previous (X) decades!
@glasshalfempty said: @Ed_ It would be utter nonsense to argue that squad selection is unimportant or that the playing staff are inconsequential to the outcome of any game and at no point have I done so.
Perhaps not, but your assertion that the opposition having knowledge of the fitness or otherwise of certain players is negligible is way off the mark. Do you think, for instance, that opposition teams don’t practice defending JJ’s corners, the marking of Tafazolli at set pieces, preventing Bayo winning headers etc? They don’t just turn up and hope all goes well on the day.
I imagine they practice defending corners and marking tall players a great deal whatever lineup they know or expect to be facing in the next and subsequent matches!
@micra said:
I imagine they practice defending corners and marking tall players a great deal whatever lineup they know or expect to be facing in the next and subsequent matches!
They do indeed, but as we know corner takers have different techniques and JJ’s are different to most. Regarding Taf, if they knew he wasn’t playing they would set up differently for set pieces because none of our other players are as tall as him.
They also, quite often, pick a team based on who they think the opposition will play - ie: McCleary is likely to be playing, we might need to double up on him, let's play X and Y. I had no idea this was some kind of football secret and that so many people are entirely unaware that it happens, though the Gasroom has taught me in the last few days that an awful lot of fans think the starting 11 should just be the same as last week every match, regardless of who the opposition is.
Comments
I speculate that it is true, although you might have to define 'training' as the regime for players returning from injury won't necessarily be the same intensity.
Club did say he had a fitness test before Fleetwood, but that felt unlikely considering it looked like a dislocated shoulder.
@ReturnToSenda
30th October - Fleetwood match thread.
"McCleary had a fitness test btw - won't be involved today but sounds like it's not nearly as bad as it looked ?"
It's no wonder this practice leaves a sour taste is it?
Yeah, that one was odd, but generally it's just secrecy - which I don't have an issue with.
But seriously, has anyone raised it with the club? It likely won't change the policy, but you'd have your objection on record.
@our_frank It's a wonder to me that the practice leaves a sour taste in people's mouths, but I find a lot of people wondrous. To me it seems obvious that keeping player condition confidential makes the opposition's job harder, so then it's just a question of whether people value their own idle curiosity over the club's competitive prospects. Clearly many people do value their own idle curiosity foremost in these instances, my own idle curiosity makes me wonder how they correlate against those who complain when the club does not achieve the required result evert match - that's a Venn diagram I would enjoy seeing.
Well said, Ed. I deal with a lot of clubs in my job and believe me, getting injury news out of most managers is like getting blood out of a stone. As I said on a different thread, I genuinely don’t understand why some supporters get so worked up about it. If we announced today that McCleary was fit/unfit to play on Saturday it would certainly help Portsmouth in their preparations but what difference would it make to Wycombe fans?
Seems to have changed in recent years though, or has it always been kept confidential?
It won’t help Portsmouth in the slightest. Danny Cowley has got significantly greater problems than knowing whether Garath McCleary is fit or not. Furthermore, knowing he is playing is a very different matter to knowing how to stop him playing. I have lost count of the number of times opposition managers have said they know how we play and yet still haven’t been able to stop us. It is a wholly spurious argument. It is a wonder to me that so many people fall for it.
Interested in where the club said this. Can't find it anywhere?
I'm not fussed on keeping players injury status secret but I do find it annoying if the club actually put out a player is having a fitness test when he isn't close to being fit.
It was in the match preview https://www.wycombewanderers.co.uk/news/2021/october/the-big-match-preview-fleetwood-vs-wycombe/
You don't think it makes any difference at all to Portsmouth's preparations to know if the best player in the league is playing or not?
Best player in the league is a big call.
And I think you're right!
Thank you. 'Handed' a fitness test is an odd term of phrase.
It must be true if the club wrote it down.
Yes, it makes so little difference as to be negligible. They can prepare all they like, it doesn’t mean they’ll be able to stop him. Look how many times teams have tried to stop Bayo. The cream always rises to the top.
The other point to make is that it is extremely unlikely that Portsmouth don't already know the extent of McCleary's injury
Yes ‘handed a fitness test’ is a very odd term of phrase. Perhaps someone walked up to him with one of those folders full of laminates and handed it to him and told him to follow the instructions for the test ?
Hope it was more readily understood than the instructions for the NHS Lateral Flow Test for Covid, free from all reputable pharmacies. Strange turn of phrase indeed.
Free as long as you get a NHS order code first now @micra
A few interesting comments.
@eric_plant - is it just Portsmouth who are extremely unlikely to not be privy to inside information on Wycombe or is there a list of clubs who are in the know? Is it just Wycombe that they have infiltrated or is their network more comprehensive? Do Wycombe has a spy network of our own? I suppose with a name like yours, you know a plant when you see one.
@glasshalfempty - You have an interesting view on how unimportant squad selection is. I feel that we are unlikely to find any middle ground here. Given how inconsequential the playing staff seem to be to the outcome of the game, it must indeed feel to you like the club are behaving in a mysterious way.
@peterparrotface - I can't remember the club being open about this information during Ainsworth's tenure, which is now a fairly long time.
@various - it may be that McCleary did indeed have a fitness test prior to the Fleetwood game. In light of the club not publishing the results of his test, perhaps best to not get hopes too high that future fitness tests may auger the return of a player to matchday duty.
Thanks for that @Blue_since_1990. I did wonder. We’ve had our pack for several months. Feeling very much under the weather last week, I thought it sensible to rule out Covid but I didn’t have any of the three main symptoms and, trying to work out what went where/did what, simply exacerbated my general malaise!
Better now and Covid Test pack back in cupboard, unused.
Glad you are ok @micra
@Ed_ It would be utter nonsense to argue that squad selection is unimportant or that the playing staff are inconsequential to the outcome of any game and at no point have I done so.
Thanks very much. Appreciated.
There's a lot of non-Covid germs about @micra so we need to carry on taking care. Had my flu jab last week...got me Covid booster this week. Having never bothered with the flu jab until last year...I've carried more vaccines in my system over the past two years than I did for the whole of the previous (X) decades!
Perhaps not, but your assertion that the opposition having knowledge of the fitness or otherwise of certain players is negligible is way off the mark. Do you think, for instance, that opposition teams don’t practice defending JJ’s corners, the marking of Tafazolli at set pieces, preventing Bayo winning headers etc? They don’t just turn up and hope all goes well on the day.
I imagine they practice defending corners and marking tall players a great deal whatever lineup they know or expect to be facing in the next and subsequent matches!
They do indeed, but as we know corner takers have different techniques and JJ’s are different to most. Regarding Taf, if they knew he wasn’t playing they would set up differently for set pieces because none of our other players are as tall as him.
They also, quite often, pick a team based on who they think the opposition will play - ie: McCleary is likely to be playing, we might need to double up on him, let's play X and Y. I had no idea this was some kind of football secret and that so many people are entirely unaware that it happens, though the Gasroom has taught me in the last few days that an awful lot of fans think the starting 11 should just be the same as last week every match, regardless of who the opposition is.
So many people? An awful lot of fans? Really?