Whilst I do not disagree with you there, they were blatantly out on their feet after 60 minutes. I've never seen a team that tired for the first matches of the season.. That whole 'preseason' most were yelling 'it's not about results, its about FITNESS!' and, yet, it apparently wasn't about fitness either..
Mentally frail and physically not fit enough. There is no excuse whatsoever for the latter in elite sport. As regards mental frailty, then I'm not a sports psychologist and don't have any answers there. I think a huge amount of damage has been done with the manner in which we have conceded late goals and this may be an issue into next season.
Even without the above, we have a huge mental block at the pit, and when visiting all of our supposed 'betters'. I really thought that if anything Martinez would have addressed that, for all his swashbuckling, gung-ho approach, but sadly not. The new manager absolutely has to deliver a few derby wins, not least at home, in my book.
There may be quite a bit of turnover with playing staff which would be unusual for us. Whilst I generally think that adding anymore than 2-3 players in a single window is too much, the absolute shambles of our last 2 seasons and some players wanting to leave wll see us have to sign 5,6,7 players IMO.
There is no substitute for hard work. And a lot of that is needed between July and August for the players, and before that in terms of planning and assessing for the new manager.
