Pre-season fixtures are rarely anything more than 22 men just ambling around the pitch in the summer heat, getting themselves ready for the forthcoming Premier League season – or any other league campaign come to that.
It’s an opportunity for clubs to throw in their youngsters, with the big guns only generally getting involved in games the nearer it gets to the start of the season.
For those fans turning up to watch a spectacle, pre-season rarely delivers on that front, and Stan Collymore has lifted the lid on why that is.
“Beyond pure fitness, if you can rattle in a few goals, fantastic – though it’s not the be all and end all,” he said to CaughtOffside for his exclusive column.
“There is very little in terms of pre-season work that prepares you for the first day of the season because usually it’s a warm day in August and the crowd dictates that you come out of the traps at 100 miles an hour when you haven’t got 100 miles an hour in your tank.
“In all honesty, I think that for most players, as long as they can get through pre-season unscathed, that’s all that matters.”
Given Collymore’s revelations, it’s a wonder that supporters would still want to dip into their hard-earned, knowing that the players on the pitch couldn’t really care what happens, as long as they can give themselves a workout and stay injury free.
The risk of injury is still there of course, particularly if a side considered a ‘minnow,’ with respect, gets the opportunity to play against a team much higher up the football food chain.
We saw with the Wrexham vs Chelsea game in America a short while ago, how James McClean wanted to stick one on Levi Colwill after only a couple of minutes – arguably to let him know how things were going to be.
And yet, as Collymore says, these games aren’t supposed to matter.
3?? minutes in to a pre-season game! ?
Chelsea's Levi Colwill gets into a fight with James McClean of Wrexham ?
And to think we call these "friendly" matches? ?
— KiX Sports NFT Exchange (@kix_digital) July 25, 2024
As more and more emphasis gets put on pre-season tours to far flung corners of planet football, it will be interesting to see how much more competitive these fixtures do get.
Supporters would arguably want to see a little more value for money, and whether that’s a few goals or fisticuffs, that would seem to be a whole lot more acceptable than knowing that the players would probably rather be at home.
The post “In all honesty…” – Stan Collymore lifts the lid on what Premier League players only want to get out of pre-season appeared first on CaughtOffside.
