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Man City fitness coach Verheijen lifts lid on Mancini rows with players

Submitted by tribalfootball.com on Sun, 05/02/2010 - 11:27

Manchester City fitness coach Raymond Verheijen has lifted the lid on manager Roberto Mancini's row with his senior players.

Verheijen, who was Guus Hiddink's fitness guru for his campaigns with South Korea, Australia and Russia, was brought in by Mark Hughes last summer to revolutionise City's training.

They embraced shorter, sharper sessions - which Mancini has since abandoned and reverted to longer sessions - often twice a day.

"I have to admit the players were really sceptical about my methods," said Verheijen in a Dutch newspaper interview.

"Craig Bellamy came to see me and said, 'What you want will not work'. I said to Craig 'Let's try this for six weeks'.

Bellamy was a special case as he has been suffering from far too many injuries in his career.

By September they had by far the best statistics for fitness in the entire Premier League and then in October, November, December as well.

And Bellamy? He felt better than ever. It was the first time in his career he did not have a single injury in pre-season.

"But in December the club decided to sack Mark Hughes. They should never have done that. I still find it impossible to understand that he was not allowed to carry on with the job he started.

"Mancini brought his entire staff with him and he did not believe in training once a day or in the shorter sessions. A big part of the coaching staff was suddenly not wanted any more. I am still tied to the club, but I concentrate more on other projects now."

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Comments (9)

Submitted by bluesboy.Manchester (not verified) on Mon, 05/03/2010 - 08:15.

If we had avoided those stupid draws agains the lower teams visiting CoMS when you and Les were running the teams training, we would have Chimps league in the bag by now instead of having to play a do or die game on Wednesday.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 05/03/2010 - 08:10.

When Mark Hughes came in one thing he promised was a much fitter set of players.

It never happened there where many times when we looked well behind other teams for fitness. The game at Tottenham stands out as the most obvious.

Although tactics come in to the equation, fitness was also an issue, I feel a lot of the draws we had under Hughes were down to this over the full 90.

So in conclusion personally I think this article is rubbish.

Submitted by Total man city (not verified) on Mon, 05/03/2010 - 07:29.

Another day another load a shit stirring bollox from tribal it's getting to the stage were people are going to have to start complaining about these pack of clowns and lies and rumours they spread
dick slap your right they were running around like headless chickens since Mancini came in defence has improved and the team have shown they can play as a unit

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