games help this overall cohesion as a unit? (Is it then simply a trade-off between what you gain with increased understanding and what you lose through tiredness and injury?) "A 27,000 match study by football coach Raymond Verheijen demonstrates a clear performance deficit by teams playing after only two days' recovery. 'I don't see that the games' authorities can continue to ask teams to play twice in three days. It is simply not fair play.' The new study, which incorporates top tier league, Champions League and Europa League matches across seven countries and ten seasons, offers emphatic proof that teams playing every three days are substantially disadvantaged by player fatigue, and for the first time quantifies this disadvantage across the season. Across the study, teams playing after just two days' recovery against teams who had enjoyed at least a three-day gap were found to be 42% less likely to win." However, maybe Rodgers is onto something when it comes to the travel involved; as shown when he sent out a shadow side for the trip to Switzerland. Despite having suffered poor results after the home games against Hearts and Udinese, it seems that, statistically speaking, there is far less overall risk of damaging your Sunday results if you played at home on a Thursday. Omar Chaudhuri, in his blog ' 5 Added Minutes ', confirms the general post-Europa hangover, but points out that away games are far more difficult to quickly recover from. "In 215 league matches after Thursday European