‘Murderball’ can help Leeds on return – Cooper
LEEDS UNITED captain Liam Cooper hopes that Marcelo Bielsa’s ultra-intense training regime will enable the club’s players to hit the ground running if the Championship season resumes.
United are back in small-scale training in small groups at Thorp Arch as they take the first steps in preparation for a potential return to competitive action at some time next month – to fulfil their commitments for 2019-20.
With nine matches of the campaign remaining, Leeds top the second-tier table and are seven points clear of third-placed Fulham after 37 matches.
Bielsa’s famed methods have revolutionised working life for Leeds’s players – none more so than during full-scale training games usually staged in midweek.
As part of the Argentine’s regime, players take part in a highintensity training match colloquially known as ‘Murderball’ in preparation for weekend games.
Qn whether Bielsa’s demands will prove a trump card in what will amount to a short, sharp ‘mini-season’, Cooper said: “I hope so.
“But football games aren’t won solely with fitness, so we’ve got to polish our tools again, get familiar with the style again and I am sure we will, it doesn’t leave you.
“We will just polish those tools and crack on. We can’t wait to get going, we are champing at the bit to get going and hopefully that won’t be too much longer.”
Ahead of returning to Thorp Arch on Monday, Leeds players had been working hard for a number of weeks on their fitness as they followed individual programmes set by the club from home.
Cooper estimates that he and his team-mates are at ‘85 to 90 per cent’ levels at the minute as they top up their fitness ahead of a potential return to full training and to matches later on in June.
“I would probably say we are at 85 or 90 per cent at the minute.
And that’s running fitness,” Cooper continued.
“Obviously when you go into a game situation and there is contact and you are up against bodies and the intensity, we will get that in the ‘Murderball’.
“But as running goes, I would say we are at 90 per cent full fitness at the minute and obviously in the coming weeks when we can start doing group sessions and contact, that is when we will get the extra 10 per cent and be ready to go.”