How Technical Performance Is Likely to Be Affected by Lengthy Coronavirus Break When Premier League Action Resumes
“We have no idea how any club is going to return,” Manchester United legend Gary Neville commented on Sky Sports when the Premier League’s June restart was announced.
“That is the one thing about this because there is no form guide to look at. We don’t know what's going to happen. I mean Liverpool could lose all nine games!”
That would be an extreme and improbable example of the possible impact of the lengthy pause in the Premier League season. But there still could be a significant impact on momentum for clubs as a result of the three months without football by the time the season restarts on 17 June.
To understand and explain this, it is possible to lean on a recent study investigating the impact of mid-season winter breaks on technical performance levels across European football and the associated question of whether a break in play generally affects team momentum.
The study by Mikael Jamil, Stuart A. McErlain-Naylor and Marco Beato of the School of Health and Sports Sciences at the University of Suffolk was recently published in the International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport (20:3, 406-419), and concluded that a break in play any longer than 13 days can act as a catalyst that may ‘halt momentum and cause performances to deteriorate’.
Looking at five seasons from 2013/14 to 2017/18, the average number of days between the last game of a PRE period (1 -3 fixtures prior to the break) and the first game of the POST period (1 -3 fixtures after the break) in Germany's Bundesliga was 32. In France’s Ligue 1 it was 18.6. The break was 12.2 days in Spain’s La Liga, while in England’s Premier League there was no break at all.
The detrimental effects on technical performance, regardless of any benefit in terms of physical condition or fitness, were seen in Germany and France, where the break was longer than 13 days. Specifically, the technical deterioration after the break was seen in shooting frequency and accuracy in Germany, and in passing frequency and accuracy in France.
The implication is that attacking fluency is more specifically most disrupted by a longer break.
In England, where the Premier League has only just introduced a winter break for the first time in 2019/20, there was no significant change in performance levels during the period in question.
Overall, the study concluded that the longer the winter break, the greater the level of deterioration in technical performance levels, with 13 days a key number to be aware of.
In terms of relevance to the current situation, the Premier League has obviously been suspended without games being played for much longer than 13 days. Players have only started training within the last fortnight and only resumed full training early last week.
Given Jamil, McErlain-Naylor and Beato’s conclusion on the detrimental impact of a normal winter break on technical performance levels if longer than 13 days, it is naive to imagine that Premier League players will be operating at their pre-suspension levels when games restart.
By the time games resume, the coronavirus break will have been three months, around 90 days.
Of most interest will the impact on the form of teams who were performing well immediately prior to the football shutdown. Manchester United, for example, were on a run of 11 games unbeaten in all competitions and had won three out of their last four Premier League fixtures.
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