Point is there is no moment in the season to do a mini pre-season, particularly if you're playing in Europe and your squads largely filled with internationals. You're lucky if you have seven days between games (and even then only if you've gone out of a cup early). If your pre-season is either a) badly planned or as in our case b) utterly f***ed by a totally unpredictable tragedy then you have to deal with the consequences. Slot wasn't able to, but tbh I'm not sure many other managers would have been able to either. I'm no sports scientist but if it was as simple as 'make them train harder to catch up' I probably could be.