Bolton Wanderers players need to up their fitness, says boss

nice to see Sir Gary get a positive mention in that article .

on a serious note, yes it's often a cheap shot to blame fitness. but our pre-seasons under DF & even Coyle were generally hopeless . and both starts to season under DF were awful. i wouldn't blame OC on that..in the relegation season the fixtures were diabolical. so i would agree, what with the injury prevention and lack of pressing on the pitch in latter half of season, that we seem lacking. let's see anyway. it's not always a case of not doing enough work..it can be a case of doing too much work and leaving the players drained too early and vulnerable to injuries.

i remember DF saying how much he admired Moyes. ( see link)
www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/21197243

there's a good chance he'd been to their training ground to observe them he may well have picked up some of his methods.
conditioning coach Verheijen calls Moyes a dinosaur for his over-training esp re RVP.
most of his predictions re bad coaches/injury crises  turn out to be true.


www.theguardian.com/football/2013/jul/25/moyes-van-persie-overtrained-verheijen-injury


if you remember Everton routinely had slow starts to seasons...Verhiejen picks up on that point here :

www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/manchester-united/10529777/David-Moyes-gambled-with-Robin-van-Persies-fitness-and-is-damaging-Manchester-United-says-Raymond-Verheijen.html

"If you look at the track record of Moyes at Everton, in the nine pre-seasons that he did, he had seven or eight times an injury crisis in pre-season followed by a slow start to the season. Clearly that pattern repeated itself at United," he continued. "The planning and conditioning part in his coaching is prehistoric."


Verheijen was baffled at how you could possibly keep repeating this pattern and not recognise it.  no self awareness. not a good quality for a manager/leader/teacher