Rafa's training is incredibly intense and to a certain extent repetitive and boring. He will make players repeat drills, positions till they are 100% perfect. It is a lot of information for folks to process. And he is incredibly cold and brutal apparently during training. His attitude was "you train 4 hours per day for 4 days, get paid millions of dollars, why are you complaining, this is nothing compared to what the rest of society do, if you cant take this get out of here". It takes players of a certain mentality to appreciate Rafa - Torres, Reina, Baraja, Mascherano, Garcia. I think there is a big cultural mentality difference in how players from some of these countries approach training - they are ok with it being hard, repetitive, and boring.
At LFC too, when Rafa left, there was a lot of statements from players like Gerrard, Carra on how training was "more fun" now. Even Bellamy, who played for LFC under Rafa and King Kenny said how training was more fun under King Kenny. However, at the end of their career, almost all of them acknowledged that Rafa was the best manager they trained under. I think pretty much all of them realized it once we started dropping down the table.
So I don't think the NUFC players are being disingenuous or anything. I think they are genuinely enjoying freedom. They don't have a person walking up to them shouting at corners, when the opposition is making 32 degree runs in front of you using zonal marking, you should stand 26 inches from the goal line at 48 degrees. You were at 24 inches and standing at 41 degrees. Let us repeat this 37 more times till you get it right.
Well it worked - end of last season our form was excellent. Tactically the players knew what they had to do.
