MORRIS: WE KNOW THE CREWE AREAS WE NEED TO IMPROVE
ALEX Morris has outlined Crewe’s plans for the summer as they try to give themselves the best possible chance in League Two next season.
Crewe are returning to the Football League’s basement division after a two-year stay in League One ended with relegation.
For Morris, the summer offers an opportunity to get his squad prepared as he looks to build on the work he started when he took over from Dave Artell for the final four games of last season.
He said: “We have outlined to the players exactly what is to come in the off season and pre season.
“They are going to have a couple of weeks off completely, three weeks off from the building, and in that third week they will start to do some physical work at home.
“Then they come in from that fourth week of the off season every Tuesday and Thursday to do some cardiovascular and weight work just to keep themselves in good shape in terms of their physical conditioning so they are ready for pre-season which starts around June 22. So, they have programmes in place to keep them ticking over during that period from the off season to when preseason starts.”
The message from Morris when he took over from Artell, initially as interim manager, was the club needed a change of momentum at the end of the season to take into the new campaign.
He took four points from his four games, having inherited a team that had just lost eight on the spin, and plans to keep the club moving in the right direction during the summer.
He said: “We have tried to lift those grey clouds in the four games we have had. To a certain degree, there have been plenty of positives that we are going to take into pre-season.
“But, ultimately, we are not daft, we know what weaknesses are there, the improvements we need to make and the solutions we need to find to overcome those.
“So, we have set about doing that as well. Everything we do, in terms of our planning, from recruitment, through to the planning of training to the training itself, will all be geared towards making sure there is no repetition of any of those things that were evident so often this season just gone.”
The manager added that players can expect a tough pre season to draw a line under the 2021/22 campaign and prepare them for League Two.
He added: “Pre-season is going to be brutal for them, mentally and physically. There are no two ways about that because the players have to be battle hardened for what is to come.
“They are going to be organised and structured in terms of their football and they are going to be coached extremely well, that is what we pride ourselves on here.
“But those other areas of the game that are so vital, in terms of being mentally strong and physically durable and robust, are areas we have targeted.
“We know they need to be better and we have many different strategies and ways that we are going to work towards making sure those are ticked off.”