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Gerrard puts Sevco’s problems down to fitness

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Image for Gerrard puts Sevco’s problems down to fitness

After just one week in the job Steven Gerrard has turned to the laziest excuse in management- his players aren’t fit enough.

For years every struggling manager has played the fitness card in order to buy time when they don’t know how to improve a squad.

Double sessions are a favourite with Pedro Caixinha coming up with the same excuses as he did away with the midweek day off in an effort to turn Andy Halliday into Kevin De Bruyne.

After Eastjetting into their Spanish training camp early on Sunday morning Gerrard had his players out on the pitch concentrating mainly on fitness work.

Very quickly the former Liverpool youth coach has realised why no club is interested in Halliday, Josh Windass, James Tavernier and the rest of a squad that has gone 11 matches against Celtic without a win as they’ve trailed in third in successive seasons since reaching the top flight.

The fitness is the thing that struck me most when watching them last season,” Gerrard told The Sun, deliberately missing the obvious lack of ability.

If you want to play at the top end and fight for trophies, be in the running when the big prizes are given out, compete against the best, the first thing you have to do is be fit.

You need to be ready for the challenges at the top level. If the fitness is not there, where do you go?

You look at the group and where you can improve it and fitness is one of those areas.

I watched Rangers close up in the Old Firm game at Ibrox and it was glaringly obvious to me that Celtic were fitter and stronger on that occasion.

It’s the easy thing to say ‘We didn’t get the luck’.

But when you go into it in a bit more detail, if you’re a man up with that amount of time on the clock, I’d expect my team to run all over the opposition physically.

I could also see signs of it in the last four or five games when I watched them as well. That’s probably a good reason why Celtic have been quite successful.”

No amount of circuit work or weight training is going to have Burnley knocking the door down to sign Ryan Jack or Greg Docherty, some extra work on the cross trainer won’t make Manchester United take a second look at Alfredo Morelos

At the comparitivly young age of 34 Gerrard quit English football for the more genteel pace of life in the MLS where he made 15 appearances for LA Galaxy.

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