Tudor & Pereira predictions, Newcastle UCL Preview & O’Neill to Blackburn

28:38They have. I don't know. I think it's not a bad draw for Newcastle. If they play anywhere near as well as what they did away in Paris, which I thought was a brilliant away performance from Newcastle, the way they stayed in the game, I thought they competed brilliantly, physically showed that the Premier League is at such a high level in terms of the physicality of the game there. If they can get that across in their performance, I think they've got every chance of going through across these two legs. It is a tough place to go and play. It's a lot of travelling. It's a different away environment, but I don't think it's a bad tie for Newcastle.

29:19I think they've got every chance there. I think it's better for Newcastle as well that the first game is away from home because Carabaug, all of their points have come at home this season. So even if they do draw 2-2 like Chelsea did or they do lose like Eidtran Frankfurt did, they know they can take them back to St James' Park in the second leg and recover if that is the case. But they have, James, and we talked about the points that they've got at home so far in the league stage, they have put in really solid performances. And Eddie Howe said it, you know, look at the Liverpool result and you think one thing, you look at the performance and you think something different.

29:53You look at the kind of quality of the game against Chelsea. Yeah, absolutely. You could say that Carabao have cost two managers their jobs or contributed to two managers losing their jobs because when they beat Benfica, Bruno Olaj got the sack. And also Enzo Mareska, I think that 2-2 draw was quite damaging really um and you know look i agree with andros that um it is to the benefit of newcastle that this second game second leg is atst james's park but i wouldn't underestimate um the distance that you're traveling um the fact that i think in a couple of the games where carabag have got points they beat frankfurt in the 94th minute um you could say that there's maybe some tiredness there from that Frankfurt team that had an impact there.

30:43Same with Copenhagen. Yeah, the second goal that kills that game is in the last 10 minutes. So they really pushed home that home advantage, Carabao. I think Newcastle have only won once away in the Champions League so far this season. That was against Union Saint-Germain. They're putting some good performances even when they haven't won games. I think they've got Man City in the middle of these two games. Carabag, Man City, Carabag, Everton, Man United, Man City in the FA Cup, Chelsea. It's quite a run coming up for Newcastle. And then Sunderland, I think, Kelly, straight after that Sunderland-Darby game.

31:22Big games for Newcastle coming up. Yeah, so this trip, you know, as much as we can say it's a good draw, I think the fact that the city in between, when you're coming back from a trip like this, you know, it does, in so much respect, equalise it a little bit. You know, when you look at the talent gap, the wealth gap and all these sorts of things, it is an equaliser, this trip. So let's see if their waveform improves in wonderful Azerbaijan. Yes, 2 ,529 miles between Newcastle and Carabag. We talk about the journey and obviously the time it takes to get there is something that's going to factor in with the players.

32:09and potentially, I don't know, jet lag for the amount of time that they're actually in the country. But how much does actual air travel make a difference? You know, if you're playing an away game and it's a longer away trip, does it make a difference? Do you feel different as a player? Yeah. Do you know what? I'm just thinking Andros is playing in Thailand at the moment. That's probably, obviously you've acquired by now. But yeah. Yeah, I was waiting to come in. Yeah, we do a lot of bus travels. We do a lot of flights and it does, it takes a lot out of you. So we land, for example, in a city and then we go to train a few hours later and your body, like you just can't move.

32:51And then the next day you're still recovering from the flight. So I think, yeah, especially when you're traveling those long distances, it does take a lot out of your body compared to obviously a home game. So, yeah, it does make a big difference. That two and a half thousand mile trip probably isn't what Newcastle need at the moment, especially as we've been saying with the news that Bruno Guimaraes is set to be out for up to 10 weeks. But there have been a lot of Premier League injuries in general. Of the nine Premier League teams playing in Europe this season, they currently have 55 injuries between them, 90 injuries across the league as a whole.

33:25That's an average of five per team. And Jordan Fairclough, who's a former first team performance and fitness coach at Liverpool, joins us. Evening, Jordan. Good evening, guys. Nice to have a minute. Jordan, do you think these stats are surprising or is it something that's been coming? If you look against the research that's sort of out there in terms of like match outputs, you can see like match outputs and physical outputs on the rise. And then you look at the recovery time between matches and between schedules and seasons being on the decrease. So if you look at those two as a whole, then you could say maybe not necessarily much of a surprise now.

34:00So just explain how that causes the injuries and how that could be the thesis for why there are so many injuries this season. Yeah, so if you look at and think of like there being like a jar of injury avoidance, you want to fill that jar with like the biggest rocks. And the biggest rocks are time, sleep and nutrition. So time between games is out of the players and all the staff's control. So that big rock is out of the way. sleep is impacted also thinking about the stages of uh night games time that they finish the time that they get back from these night games and also i'm sure you recognize like after a late night game you're probably sleeping at 2 3 4 5 a.m in the morning um so those like feel like if you're lucky yeah exactly if you're lucky so that sort of biggest rock sleep there is um is impacted so then you've got the the sort of the smaller rocks and the smaller pebbles of um like active recovery, passive recovery, which is where a lot of the work in the departments and the coaches and the practitioners will be done.

35:02But yeah, the big rocks, time and sleep between matches and schedules is hampered. So kind of starting with not a great starting point. So when we were talking about Newcastle's trip, for example, to Carabag, if you've got a 2 ,500 mile flight to get to where you're going, and obviously, don't mean to state the obvious, but you've then got to get that flight back again at the end of the game. But it's going to come quite soon after the final whistle. So again, is sleep disruption a big part of why those long trips are so disruptive to players and why that could potentially lead to injuries? Yeah, so you'll finish the game, say 11pm, likely leave the stadium if you're lucky at 12 and then you've got that long flight back.

35:47So even if you're naturally falling asleep at three, four o 'clock in the morning, you're probably getting home at that time as well after these long journeys and the impact that has then on decisions around training schedules the next day and then you're likely to play again in 48 hours, like a few days later. So it plays a massive part in the recovery between games, yeah. I mean, I think it's really interesting, obviously from my experience of those kind of injuries and trips, I mean, how much ownership do the clubs take in terms of getting that recovery right and also in terms of that active recovery.

36:22I mean, so many muscle strains are there due to imbalances or alignment, biomechanics issues. I mean, is there enough of that kind of work going on behind the scenes to keep players aligned, to keep players functioning, really good functional movements? I see so much stuff sometimes that just is non-function. Okay, it might be strength or fitness-based, but I find that crossover to that work can get blurred and there's so many staff like you go into a whether it be academy or first team and there's so many different roles how how do you keep one direction going when there's so many people fulfilling so many different functions yes um like you say there's a lot of people there but there's a lot of people that we're doing a lot of research and innovation in those areas to try and get on ahead of the curve of of those injuries and they'll be, depending on the size of clubs, potential specialist areas in certain recovery modalities and performance.

37:20But I think the clubs are doing everything they can to deal with the constraints that they're placed under to try and deal with the limited time they have between games to recover. And perhaps there's a slight lag between the performance science which governs these increases in outputs. A lot of early research went into trying to make players fitter, faster stronger and maybe there's a little bit of a lag now between the recovery science that comes to help these players recover um similarly perhaps players of staff have hit the ceiling of what's actually possible in the time that they've got to help players recover as much as possible um but all clubs on there will be doing everything they can to to look at these imbalances to address these movement mechanics and um yeah like you say there's a lot of members in these staffs now and they'll all play their role to try and help that as best as possible.

38:14Managers are always under pressure to get results. And that pressure kind of filters down to people in your roles and your departments. But how do you deal with that? Because, I mean, for example, you see clubs like Tottenham at the moment, they have a lot of injuries. It means that the fit players have to play for longer, more than they should. And you then have this compounding effect because then they get injured as well. How do you deal with the pressure of, let's say, a manager who's saying, I've got this injury crisis here, I have to play this player? We don't really get to see that a lot from the outside.

38:53So how do you handle it? Yes, obviously every club will be slightly different and the relationships between departments will be slightly different. So, of course, there'll be just conversations that go between head of medical, head of performance perhaps, and maybe the manager. I guess everyone's on the same team, everyone's in the same boat and everyone wants the players to be getting back as fast as possible and as healthily as possible. So it's just a collaborative effect and a collaborative team effort to get those players back there. Jordan, in my experience of having a European campaign and not having a European campaign, when you have Saturday to Saturday games, I feel like the sports scientists now, they sort of control the loads that you're going to replicate on a Saturday.

39:36So when you get to a Saturday, you've already done it in the week. So your body is more used to doing it. Whereas when you have like a European campaign, especially now, there's eight Champions League group games. Nuka also got two playoff games. That's 10 Champions League games already for them this season by the end of this month. You can't really replicate those loads in training. It's basically preparing for Carabag, then recovering and then preparing for the Premier League game on the weekend. You don't really get those training loads in training for the body to get used to. Is that correct?

40:10Yeah, that is correct. And like you say, those match outputs in the midweek, you can see that as the training effects, perhaps. So the body is going through that high load in the midweek game and then it's getting it again on a Saturday. The trouble can sometimes come when you're trying to get the subs to do that. So that's like an issue that some teams will face is trying to prepare the subs and the other squad players for maybe a two-game week when they don't play these 90-minute games to get that load. Jordan, it's not an easy job to try and get people to feel sympathy for Premier League footballers.

40:44But what we're talking about here isn't getting the violin out for players and saying, oh, poor you, you have to play three times in a week. This is about whether or not these elite athletes can reach elite levels as consistently as they're being asked to do. And if they are asked to do that, it's about whether they're going to either not reach those levels or get injured and then not be available for clubs. And I think there's one way if you maybe zoom all the way out a little bit and look at seasons rather than like days between matches. Maybe there's an accumulative distress that's on the bodies that it's lack of recovery between seasons that these players don't get.

41:27And there's also the physical stress, which we can measure really easily and match outputs. But then there's emotional and psychological stress as well, which is harder to measure, but also has an effect on the body. So some people might say, when I'm stressed, I get spots. It's not because your skin's stressed. It's just that's how your body is reacting to the stress that it's under. And within football matches and football seasons, perhaps there's like an accumulation of this sort of chronic stress of physical, emotional, psychological, which the players then get the recovery time in between these matches and seasons to let drop.

42:01So when the players are stressed, you're talking to somebody who has clearly no medical expertise here. But are you saying that when the players are stressed, they get tense and then they're more likely to kind of pick up injuries? Would that be the kind of very basic explanation of it? Potentially so, yeah, potentially so. And then you can look at, I've mentioned sleep and sleep really is one of the biggest tools. and when we're just stressed generally as people like our sleep quality might reduce our sleep volume and sleep hours might reduce so over time there might be an effect of that um but yeah there's the way the body and the muscles can recover um between matches between training when it's under a little bit of stress won't be as optimal as if it's well rested or less stress so we use i use stress a very general term but it can have sort of more significant effects on the body when it's chronic and it's over a long period of time.

42:55Jordan, it's been so good talking to you because I think we talk so much about this thing and I'm speaking for James now as well, but for James and I in particular, Matt and Andras obviously have played and have been in that situation. But for us to kind of get that insight into something that we kind of merrily talk about with no experience has been really, really good. So Jordan, thanks so much. You're very welcome. Thank you for having me on.

43:27Joining us now, new Blackburn Rovers boss, Michael O 'Neill, who's going to manage the club till the end of the season, alongside managing Northern Ireland as they look to qualify for the World Cup. So, Michael, you've managed to spare a few minutes tonight from the busiest man in football at the moment. Good evening, Kelly. Good evening, guys. Yeah, well, I'm not sure whether I'm the busiest man in football, But it's certainly been a very, very busy few days. Obviously having to, you know, drop into Blackburn on Friday and go straight into the dugout Saturday and deal with the game. So I'm hoping things will settle down.

44:03Today was a good training day with the lads. And we obviously prepare for a game on Friday night. But it's already been a good start at Rovers. A 3-1 win at QPR and out of the bottom three. It's just nice to get that one out the way. Yeah, I think so. Look, it was Damian Johnson, who's obviously been at the club a long time as a coach, who I know well, had done a lot of work preparing the team anyway. So it was nice to have that familiarity, to walk in with someone and to bring Stephen Davis and Phil Jones in with me as well. It was a great start for us, really, because like anything you want, the week after, any positive result is always easier coming in on a Monday morning.

44:47So it's meant that the atmosphere has been good in the club and it's made that building relationships with players that little bit easier when obviously you've got off to a good start. As you say, you've only been there a few days. What have you made of it? What have you made of the players in your first few days? Well, look, you know, Kelly, you know the club yourself from your dad's history with the club. It's a fabulous club. It's having a difficult time. They've had a difficult season to date. and I'm sure at the start of the championship season their aspirations were to be, you know, looking to be in a top six position but now obviously they're at the wrong end of the table and fighting for their championship survival.

45:30But I think there's a lot of good players in the squad. It's quite a young squad. They've got a number of young players that they've brought in from, you know, leagues outside, overseas leagues that possibly, you know, their first season in England has proved quite challenging. But I think there's enough quality in the squad to get away from the predicament we find ourselves in at this minute in time. Michael, just two questions from me. The first one is, what does a normal week look like as an international manager? And then the second one is, how has that changed now you're at Blackburn? Well, I think this is what people probably, you know, maybe don't understand.

46:08As an international manager, really, you know, your time is spent. monitoring your players and obviously if you look at the majority of my players they play in the EFL so they play in the Championship or League 1 so my time would be spent possibly at a game Tuesday or Wednesday night and again a game at the weekend the rest of the time is my time is spent predominantly working with the technical director and some aspects of what we do within our academy and our youth set up and with our 21s and our 19s and 17s. This is the worst time for an international manager from November to March because it's a long spell without obviously any obvious games.

46:55I've had two, two and a half months preparation already done for the game in March in Bergamo. So for me to be able to come in and get I suppose six to seven weeks in the cut and thrust of the championship with Blackburn Rovers and obviously hoping to make an impact there. I don't think it hinders me in any way in terms of the preparation for the game in March. You have to understand that there is downtime as an international manager. Most of my staff, or basically all of my staff who assist me work in club football. They work at different clubs and we come together for an international window which will last 10 days.

47:36So until my players report on the 22nd of March which is the Sunday before the Italy game I won't have any interaction with them in terms of a training facility or input with them. We'll obviously have dialogue and we'll have messages and things like that, but we won't have any real preparation until we get the boys in camp, which will be on that Sunday. Michael, what's the biggest difference between international management and domestic club? And which do you prefer best? Do you have a favourite? well I think it depends whichever one you're winning games in I suppose is the one that favour the most if I'm honest I think there's a lot of different things I think international management is very very much about man management it's very, you know, at the end of the day the players are selected and it's a representative situation as you lads all know when you're a player you're an employee of the club as a manager is an employee of the club as well so that relationship is different.

48:43At the end of the day, a player has the choice to turn up for international duty or not. So I think how you manage the players has to be different from how you would manage players in a club situation. And I don't really have a preference either way. I think what made this opportunity feasible for me was the transfer window was already closed. So I wasn't dealing with trying to change anything in the squad or do anything in relation to that. There's people at the club that control that anyway. So all I'm really in here is to try and galvanise the club, prepare the team for the games that are ahead of us.

49:24And as an international manager, those are the two key things that you must do. You must galvanise the squad and obviously prepare your team. You're bringing players. We'll bring players together on a Sunday and we'll have three days to prepare them for a World Cup playoff. That's the only time we'll have. So I think you learn to get good at it over the years because you've done it for, you know, I've done it for now over 100 games at international level. So those are the key differences. I think you've got a much more, you know, narrow prism to work in than in international football, whereas a club manager, you're probably dealing with a lot more facets of the club.

50:01But thankfully, as I say, at this minute in time with Blackburn, those are not on my desk. The differences are probably clearer, But I think in any job, when you practice two disciplines, actually you learn from one and you take those learnings into the other side of it. Have you found that that's happened from your years in international management and then your years in club management? Oh, totally. Yeah, I think, you know, the problem, I think one of the biggest challenges as an international manager is maintaining your skills because you're not on the pitch every day. you're watching a lot of football you know I watch football from League 2 level to Scottish Championship, I also do some work for UEFA where I watch the Champions League as a technical observer so I love that job because I get to see the game at the top level of the game and see what's happening it's very different from what's happening in League 2 and League 1 in the EFL of course but I have to you know try and assess my players because I'm going to ask them to step up and play against players who play regularly in the Champions League and play regularly in Serie A or in the English Premier League.

51:12So I think that's one of the biggest challenges as an international manager is to stay current because the game is changing so much. How the game is coached and how the information is given to players. One of the biggest benefits I have in my staff is that most of them work in the Premier League. so they keep me abreast of how the technical area, for example, is communicating with the stand in the Premier League, how, for example, the top clubs are doing this, how the information is presented to the players in terms of pre-match, post-match, individual. There's a lot of... And if you're not doing that on a daily basis, you need help with that.

51:55Thankfully, I have that. But obviously now I'll pick up things within Blackburn from their staff, how they do things so I think you know you never lose out from doing that and I think when you're in the job like a lot of times as an international manager you can possibly go in and visit clubs and see things but they really only show you what they want you to see they don't you don't really get to see under the bonnet and uh you know it's much you know here I'm suddenly again man managing a group of people that I've met in the last two to three days um and I haven't had to do that for the last two or three months.

52:28Michael, just quickly, just tell us what a technical observer is for UEFA. It's a really, really cushy number where you get to go to Champions League games and you pick the man of the match. And if you do it really well, they take you to the Champions League final at the end of the year. I'd recommend it to any of you guys if you can get it. Yeah, I've just looked at the list of people who are doing it. I think the qualifications is quite a high bar for people like Rafa Benitez, Roberto Martinez Olly Gunnar Solskjaer Gareth Southgate people like that are doing that is there a slot available there Michael are you giving that one up no that's the one that I never give up you can never give up that one comes with hospitality you'll never get asked yeah Andros Michael in terms of bringing your backroom staff to Blackburn was there an agreement between Northern Ireland and Blackburn not to kind of take the backroom staff from Northern Ireland and keep it separate or was that just a personal choice?

53:27No, that was a personal choice. As I touched on earlier, my backroom staff, my assistant manager, Jimmy Nickel, is in a more full-time role. But Jimmy's, club football wouldn't be of interest to him. And Stephen Davis, basically how a lot of international teams work, they bring their staff in on almost like, I suppose, a secondment for the international window. They come in, work with the team for 10 days and then disappear back to their clubs. So it wasn't an option for me to bring staff with me. The reason I brought Stephen is obviously I've known him a long time and I felt that he would obviously be very useful to me in terms of his knowledge of the game and I think the career he had as a player, his profile as a player, but also because he's a young coach and I felt with Phil Jones, the two of them would bring a bit of freshness.

54:22I think the club need it with a young group of players, possibly those types of coaches rather than possibly an older coach who had maybe been in the championship for 20 years and coached a lot at that level. I felt that we needed maybe something a little bit different, a bit vibrant. And we also had this ability of knowing that Damien Johnson was there, who has been at the club, I think, 10 years in the coaching role. So there was no types of conflict of interest there in any way. So, as I say, you know, I'm in constant contact with my staff, with the Irish Football Association, but they work for various clubs.

54:58So it's, you know, done on a very sort of, I suppose, we're never together until we get in the international window, so to speak. Anything we do is very much like this, you know, Zoom-based calls, you know, the transfer of information in terms of analysis, set piece information, physical information, medical information, all of that done is remotely because we're rarely in the same place at any one point in time until we come together for the international window. Michael, can I ask, what did you think when you found out that the Italian Football Federation wanted to play this game in Bergamo instead of playing it in Milan or Rome?

55:42Because certainly the way that's been reported in the Italian media is it's because the Italian team already feels it has enough psychological baggage after having not qualified in 2014 and 2018. And they feel that San Siro or Stadio Olimpico would bring too much pressure. So what do you think about the decision of playing at that stadium in Bergamo? I mean, I imagine you would have liked to play at one of those big stadiums, San Siro or Stadio Olimpico, instead of where it's being held. I'll be honest, quite the opposite no, I'm delighted that the game's in Bergamo I actually went to one of the first things I did when the draw came out was I went to the Atalanta Inter Milan game on the 28th of December I think it was and I saw a game live in the stadium I thought it was important to see a game live in the stadium, which I did the stadium is not that dissimilar from our own stadium in Belfast Our stadium in Belfast holds just under 19 ,000.

56:45So the Italians have their reasons for wanting to play there. But if I'm honest, I felt that it suited us more. So if you look at the majority of the players in my squad, outside the lads who play in the Premier League, and we only have four, and unfortunately Conor Bradley is injured, they play their football in stadiums anywhere between 10 ,000 to say 25 ,000, 30 ,000 so they're not exposed to the San Siro or the Stadio Olimpico so I think we'll feel very at home in Bergamo and we won't be intimidated by the atmosphere at all, we've played in bigger stadiums against Germany for example so no I think it suits us I can't really obviously the Italians and Gennaro Gattuso have the reasons for going there as well but we're happy with the choice of venue Michael really been lovely talking to you, thank you so much for spending the time with us very good luck in the World Cup playoffs and good luck for the rest of the season with Blackburn as well.

57:47Lovely, thanks take care guys. Thanks very much to Michael O 'Neill currently the Blackburn Rovers and Northern Ireland boss and UEFA Technical Observer which is the job he says he will be clinging on to for as long as is feasibly possible Right, that's all we've got time for on this episode of the Football Daily Podcast Thank you very much to Andros, to Matt and to James. And thank you very much for listening. Bye-bye.

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