Tracky treat is just round the corner

AUTUMN’S here, the dark nights are drawing in, and a request from the players came to me via our defender Will Evans last Tuesday morning. Could they train in tracksuit bottoms on cold days?

I’ve never had a problem with that. I know the Liverpool teams in the 1970s and 1980s banned tracksuits and they didn’t do so badly. But times have changed, the world has moved on and if the players give me the intensity and the effort I’m looking for, I don’t have a problem.

Corners are of more concern. We have only managed 13 goals this season — less than one a game — and we have not scored from a corner in any of our 16 league matches. It is one of the things we’ve been looking at in the two afternoon training sessions we’ve introduced as we look to get ourselves properly on track. People think it must be like an army camp when they see the words ‘double training sessions’ but it hasn’t seemed like that.

We train hard in the mornings and the afternoon sessions — on Tuesday and Wednesday — are less excessive. Part of it is us watching videos put together by our analyst Dan Evans to deal with problems which I tell him we need to focus on. Such as no goals from corners. That has been drilling a hole in my head.

You need delivery of course, clever movement, desire and a belief that a corner is a dangerous weapon.

I struck a deal with Will. ‘Tell the players this,’ I said. ‘When we score from a corner, the players can wear tracksuit bottoms to train in.’

A bit old school, you might think. But I want to see if that works.