Chris Dunlavy
A FRESH TAKE ON FOOTBALL
ADOCTOR who regularly works nights once described the strange delirium that descends during a sleep-deprived graveyard shift.
Upon finishing work one morning, he drove straight from the hospital to a music shop in town and bought an £800 guitar. Days later, rested and refreshed, he was baffled as to what motivated such an expensive and unnecessary purchase. He couldn’t even remember the thought process.
This is why complex surgery is never performed at night, apart from in emergencies. You don’t want someone like him chopping you up.
Humans do not perform well when they’re knackered. They lose concentration. They make mistakes. They think about guitars when they should be sawing through your tibia.
Chernobyl, the Titanic, Exxon Valdez; so many of history’s most infamous disasters occurred in the middle of the night, when the people minding the shop were shattered. Countless studies have demonstrated this correlation between fatigue and performance. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is responsible for investigating all transport accidents in the USA, estimates that fatigue - both physical and mental - accounts for 15-20 per cent of all fatal incidents.
In 2009, the Aerospace Medical Association reported that tiredness can result in pilot error, slowed reactions, missed opportunities, and incorrect responses to emergency situations. Best avoid that 3am flight to Benidorm, eh? Football has no such drastic consequences, but it does have the same issues. Just cast your mind back to Coventry’s 2-1 defeat to West Brom at the Hawthorns last weekend.
Passive
“Miles off it,” was the verdict of studio pundit Clinton Morrison, an assessment shared by Sky Blues boss Mark Robins. “Too passive,” complained the 54-year-old. “We just didn’t show enough aggression, and when we did get chances, we were too rash.”
All true. But anyone watching Coventry could see they were goosed. This manifested in all sorts of ways, from poor touches and decisions in possession to the hurried finishing of Ellis Simms, but most obviously in their malfunctioning rearguard.
A back three almost instantly morphed into a static back five, much to the consternation of Robins. “That was never the plan,” he admitted.
Plans are the first thing out of the window when fatigue sets in. It’s one of the reasons Manchester City win so many games. They pass and move and pass and move until the opponent is
