Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag suggests that players are finding it difficult to maintain consistent performance levels due to being “overburdened.”
Following their 4-3 victory over Liverpool in the FA Cup, his team encountered difficulties in a 1-1 draw against Brentford in their subsequent match.
When questioned about the differing performances, Ten Hag pointed to player workload as a factor.
“The players get overloaded and can’t bring the performances any more,” the Dutchman said.
“We are already I think over the point of what we demand from our top players,” he added.
Ten Hag said it was not just his side being affected and suggested the Manchester City team which drew with Arsenal at the weekend, where Kyle Walker and John Stones were absent, was “different” to the side United lost 3-1 to last month.
“You see the levels dropping with them [Manchester City] again, it was a different team to when we faced them, so yeah the levels with teams will drop at any moment if we keep going in this process by overloading the international programme,” he said in a news conference before Thursday’s Premier League game against Chelsea.
“You can’t 100% avoid this, it’s impossible, it depends on certain facts. Also you have national teams and so five times a year you give the players away and you don’t have any impact.
“With some national teams we have very good connections, we manage the programmes, but there are also others who do what they want and you don’t have anything in hand, but they are doing that.”
Ten Hag also said his players “don’t train too hard” between games so as not to further increase the demands on them.
“We need to be fit, the standards in this league, you need to be fit otherwise you can’t match the standards that are required in a game. We don’t train too hard,” he explained.
The 2022 World Cup was staged in the middle of last season, leading to more fixture congestion domestically, and the United boss believes that is still having an impact.
“I know it still has an effect, the huge number of games in the last 18 months, it still has an impact on our squad, the accumulation on the players,” he said.
Fifpro, the global player’s union, has emphasized the necessity for football to take additional measures to safeguard against “hazardous levels of fixture congestion.”
Simultaneously, Fifa, the world governing body, is expanding its Club World Cup tournament, and UEFA, the governing body for European football, is enlarging the Champions League starting from the next season.