What we've had for the last five seasons, is a manager and supporting team, who compelled the squad to give about 120% of what they naturally could IMO.
Look at Luke Shaw, now a bit part player at what 23/24?
Look at Rose, Alderweireld, physically undermined by the previous regimes mortgaging tomorrow for a win today.
It happens to all Bielsa's teams, run out of gas Feb-March
bus-conductor
watches a lot of French footie, he will know this pattern happens with this excessive intensity and elite fitness mantra which Poch formed from his tutelage.
What we need IMO, is the fitness team from Juve (if memory serves or was it AC Milan?), who buy up 30-33 year olds and get another 2-3years out of them. Because they will understand these players in varying forms have Lactic/Uric/Arachidonic Acid excesses at their points of weakness (previous injury sites, sites they compensate for muscular/skeletal weakness etc), as the high intensity creates an excess of Acid waste which only certain phsiologies can cycle at super high levels (which intensity training + games induces).
We need an elite recovery team, to bring the physical age of our players back down as far as is possible IMO.
These backed up metabolic residues will always manifest in this 'lack of intensity' or 'slow' starts, we have seen for over 18months almost consistently, and for 5years on/off (remember the latter season collapses in the first to seasons, just like Bielsa teams always suffer).
People complain about Kane, that proves the point, a club supporter, loves us, is he really choosing to amble around more like a championship player, rather than a Drogba like performance we saw at Spam? Of course not, his body has backed up performance residue, which compels the autonomic nervous system to make him unable to be 'at it'.
I pray that Mourinho does not do the Poch thing, of making them pay by more intensity for poor performances, it's just insanity. I hope he makes them all take rest, rest, rest. Massage the shit out of them, not massacre them.
NOTE : I AM NOT BLAMING POCH, HIS FITNESS EXPERTS SHOULD HAVE SEEN THIS DEVELOPING.