Pre-Season Training Starts Today!
Today marks the start of pre-season training for the players as the build up to the 2011/2012 will now begin in earnest.
The next two or three weeks could be defining for many of the players as Andre Villas Boas analyses his squad, particularly the youth players who will need to convince the new manager that they should be in his first team plans next season.
With few ins and outs so far I expect decisions to be made in the coming weeks of just who needs to come and go based in large part on what the new manager sees in pre-season. In years gone by today would be a very painful day for the players as they started intensive fitness programs to regain their fitness and burn off any excess weight they had put on during their holiday.
In short they would run, run and then run some more in an unpopular and gruelling regime to rebuild fitness. With players now more professional than their predecessors the need for such punishing regimes has subsided as players maintain a higher level of core fitness and Jose Mourinho was among the vanguard that bucked this trend and introduced the ball to training from day one.
The first warm up game is in 10 days time against Portsmouth and it will be interesting to see who is in the squad by the time the tour of Asia given the expected changes in personnel. Just over a month until the new season and I just cant wait!
