Alan Shearer’s fitness regime paying off

Apr 17 2009 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

NEWCASTLE United are already starting to feel the benefit of the strict fitness regime introduced by Alan Shearer and Iain Dowie, according to the club’s new manager.

Shearer was heartened to see his players finish strongly in the 1-1 draw with Stoke City last weekend as the visitors managed to take the game to their hosts in the closing stages of a tight contest.

And, having brought in tough new rules for the players in training when he was unveiled as manager – which include all injured players having to stay at the training ground to work on their rehabilitation until 4pm – Shearer also hopes to ease the injury problems which have weakened the squad all season.

He said: “We sit down late every afternoon and review it.

“Can we do anything better, how do we improve it?

“There’s obviously something not right because we’re third bottom of the League and we’ve had a lot of injuries.

“I don’t know whether its fate or the 4 o’clock thing, but a lot of those injuries are clearing up.

“You’ve always got players who’ve had a knock, or playing with injuries or injections, particularly at this stage of the season.

“Hopefully the step up in training has improved things.

“I looked at how well we played in the last half an hour at Stoke, was it because of improved fitness or confidence? Hopefully it’s a bit of everything.”