Town manager Paul Jewell has revealed that the Blues topped some of the Prozone fitness tables for August — but for the wrong reasons. The Blues have used the Prozone system, which provides clubs with player performance information for analysis from every game, for a number of years now.
Jewell said: "We had all the Prozone figures through for August and the team that covered the most distance in 90 minutes was us.
"We had the highest number of sprints and the longest high speed runs. So, of all the fitness stats, we’re at the top in three of them and in the top five of the other two.”
But he says there’s an explanation for those table-topping figures: "The reason we’re running around so much is because we’re giving possession away cheaply.
"That is definitely a confidence thing, the way we give the ball away. In training we knock it around, we pass the ball and move it and it’s great, but at the minute [in matches] we’re just giving the ball away and making the pitch big when the opposition have got it, therefore we have to cover huge amounts of ground.
"Sometimes when you look at the games and think we’re treading water but we’re only doing that because we’ve run so far.”
Jewell says the stats show that the opposite is the case for the Championship’s pace-setters: "It’s quite interesting that some of the teams at the top of the table are bottom of the league on fitness stats. But on technical stats and on keeping the ball, they’re top of the league, and that’s what it’s about.
"We’re running around because we’re giving possession of the ball away too cheaply. It’s not because we’re not working hard, in fact we’re working harder than most, that’s proved. But when it comes to keeping possession, we’ve been cheap with it.”