Match preparation in a different league now
Managers are always criticised for not being up front and honest with the media, but when both Paul Lambert and Sam Allardyce suggested that this famous competition wasn’t high on their priority lists, with both sides struggling at the wrong end of the Premier League, they were widely condemned by the purists.
I can sympathise with them, however, as such are the fortunes at stake at the highest level, survival is the main priority. For us here at Brighton it’s a different story as we try and get promotion to the Premier League. We sit seventh in the table, level on points with our play-off rivals in sixth. We have a near fully fit squad that has been playing both well and relatively consistently in recent weeks, so there has been competition for places all over the park.
After a summer of upheaval here, with Gus Poyet departing unceremoniously after a successful spell in charge which saw the club gain promotion from League One and then reach the Championship play-offs in its first season, Oscar Garcia was placed in charge. He learned his trade at the famous Barcelona Academy and then went onto manage Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel, where he won the league title.
The nucleus of the squad was still intact from a successful couple of seasons so he has kept the momentum flowing by making only minor adjustments. Expectations at Brighton have been raised by a few good seasons and, with a brand new stadium that has regular attendances of over 25,000 for home games, the sense here is definitely of a football club on the way up.
It must be very hard to make the adjustment from both youth football in Spain and senior football in Israel, to taking the control of a side looking to gain promotion from the English second tier. To juggle the schedule of this demanding league isn’t easy but I was glad the manager took the FA Cup seriously and was anxious to progress.
Preparation for any game always starts days in advance to ensure the team are as ready as they can be to win. Over the years football has evolved so much on the sports science, medical and analysis fronts that the game I’m involved in today is nothing like the one I knew when I started playing professionally in 1999.
On match days, when we play at home, we will report at the stadium for 11am, where we will have a meeting to discuss the opposition. We then make our way up to the players’ lounge for our pre-match meal which will consist of anything from pasta, chicken, omelettes, to toast, cereal or porridge, depending on the preference of the individual player. The players’ lounge has televisions and sofas so the lads can relax and either watch the early game or mess about on their iPads until we make our way back to the dressing room at about 1pm.
We then have another team meeting on tactics and set-pieces to make sure that things we have worked on at the training ground over the previous few days are still fresh in our minds.
We will then get changed and most players will be getting massages or treatments on current or past injuries to ensure they are ready. This is one aspect of the game that has changed hugely in the modern era. In years past players would literally turn up before training and walk out onto the pitch without going near the gym or treatment room. Today footballers spend a huge amount of time preparing for training, whether it’s stretching, injury prevention work, massage or strengthening work. Before we go out on the pitch for our warm-up we will do activation work in the warm-up room. This will entail core work and simple exercises to switch on all the key muscle groups and ensure we are ready for the more strenuous routine on the pitch. It’s our pre-warm-up warm-up, if you like.
Once we have completed our warm-up on the pitch, it’s back into the changing room to put our shirts and shin pads on, before taking on board last minute reminders about individual and collective objectives.
Then, finally, it’s game time.
After having a few niggling injuries at times since my arrival at Brighton, it was nice to play the full 90 minutes on Saturday and, of course, even nicer to get the win against Reading. We heard afterwards Martin O’Neill was at the game in which Reading had Irish internationals Stephen Kelly and Alex Pearce playing while Stephen Ward and myself for Brighton. It was encouraging for all of us to know the Ireland manager had paid a visit. I haven’t given up hope of representing my country again and will always be available for selection. And I’m confident that if I keep fit and playing to the standard I did against Reading then I can still make an impact at international level.
