I thought the players were trained hard in pre season? Also everyone say we are running a lot more. We can’t be running a lot and conserving energy at the same time surely? The two are mutually exclusive, no?
And this is why stats such as these reported are total garbage without context.
Run the furthest, how dose this actually translate into a football match? Are these jogs or sprints? What is the intensity? Are the KM's spread across the entire team equally or have we sent out 1,2,3(???) players to run like dervishes by pressing the oppo whilst everyone sits back?? Is this running with the ball or without it?
You can work the players mega hard in pre-season to give them a base level of fitness, then dial it back once the season starts.
I've had two mates that we professional Tri-Athletes, their taring was all meticulously worked out on spreadsheets for the entire year, broken down to every day of the week, it was tailored around the dates of the competition. It's very, very complicated and turns them into utter boring wankers to be around. But this is the nature of elite professional sports.
I have no idea how this translates into a whole team, I can only guess that the players might not be aware of the program they are actually on, they just do what they are told. Again, the actual specifics day to day are 100% managed as Poch (and it's well documented that it's been done with other managers) did with us, all the training he did was focused on us peaking in the Christmas and New Year. We smashed teams in this period, whilst also starting slowly and finishing weakly (there was always much criticism of his style of football caused his teams to fall away at the end of seasons, the same too was directed at Bielsa teams).
Are we geared to run at a steady competitive pace throughout the entire season, or peak in Christmas/New Year (like Poch) or are we geared to finish on a tsunami of high-pressing football and blow teams out of the water during the run-in??? Or Conte doesn't believe in this. The truth is no one knows other than a key group at the club.