Mate at work is a Palace fan, here's his thoughts on Dowie/Harbin after reading Danny's latest blog entry.....
"Interesting article on your board about Harbin. We did have a lot of
hamstring injuries in at the start, but that, if I remember rightly, was
because our players were unfit in the first place.
Looks like some of the Charlton players didn't like the Dowie approach,
especially when he was following on from the Curbishley way of doing
things. I assume that Dowie \ Harbin used the same methods at Charlton as
they did with us, the main difference being that when Dowie took over at
Palace, we were third from bottom of the Championship. We then lost one
game in 5 months and went up. Even in the Premiership, we didn't get
relegated until the last day (which I'm sure you'll remember) when even the
most blinkered of Palace fans, and Alan Hansen, would've said we'd be down
before the clocks change. Over the space of 18 months, Dowie got it right.
Not always pretty, but right.
What was also remarkable was, with the exception of our keeper (who had to
retire due to injury) the team that went up were the same squad that were in
the relegation spots.Then the wheels fell off. Playing players out of
position, sticking with his faves, but he still got us into the play-offs.
A team that were putting in some of the worst performances since I've been
going to Selhurst, and he got them to the play-offs!
Remains to be seen if Jordan does get rid of Taylor, but the main difference
will be between the two situations is that Charlton sacked Dowie while, it
seems, they were not playing badly. Palace are playing that badly, and are
in free-fall. Taylor has been given the vote of confidence by SJ, so that's
him screwed."
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Comments
Curbs says in his book that he worked his players in training as hard if not harder than they would encounter in a match situation although as he gained more experience he would tone it down if he felt they were leaving too much on the training ground.
What might be credible is that Dowie's new signings found it all too hard. After all the injuries are predominantly from them. Either that or our medical department cocked up bigtime.
Secondly if the squad is being worked too hard then their fitness will suffer as they will not recover in time for matches nor would their fitness progress as quickly.