Players Lack Of Fitness Described By Allardyce As 'A Joke'

Last updated : 02 August 2007 By Footy Mad - Editor

Allardyce has set his sights on putting an end to the fitness problems that have hampered the club in recent years - through hard work. And he said yesterday "We have a long list of fitness problems and the season hasn't even started!"

Allardyce was unable to put as many top names out in a friendly defeat to Hull last night as he would have liked due to injury and he wants an end to such difficulties.

Allardyce: "We couldn't, unfortunately, bring the team down that we wanted to (to Hull) because of all these niggly problems that we've got.

"And obviously at this stage of the season we're very disappointed with the number of problems that we've got. It appears the players' tolerance levels are still very, very low and obviously I warned everybody about that before I came.

"I felt that they were deconditioned to a point and it's been proven so. We've been trying to train them on double shifts. Take them on double shifts in terms of two sessions a day and they haven't been able to tolerate it. I'd like to have brought a full-strength side to play 90 minutes here and a full-strength side to play 90 minutes on Sunday, unfortunately I'm not going to get that."