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Manager Ange Postecoglou
- Thread starter The Fighting Cock
- Start date
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Moyes is winning matches with a player like Beto up front, every week that passes Ange is shown to be more of a fraud. The PL managers we used to laugh at are still way better than him.
I don’t think there’s a single manager in the league other than Ange who could lose to Leicester at home when 1-0 up at HT. Even if we somehow win the Europa we have got to bin this guy.
I don’t think there’s a single manager in the league other than Ange who could lose to Leicester at home when 1-0 up at HT. Even if we somehow win the Europa we have got to bin this guy.
Why is anyone even thinking we could actually win a MAJOR tournament, its an absolute shit show atm.
We are stuck with this fucking joke for rest of this waste of a season
With this clown we couldn't win a fart at a bean festival.
McKenna on the other hand
yea, with that sort of record hes the most in demand manager going then. unless we have him tapped up already (which i doubt) then we probably aint getting him. hell have a more attractive club after him in the summer.Bournemouth, with injuries. Last 13 games W8, D4 L1
The L was Liverpool.
Unlike our manager, their man is pretty much walking on water at this stage with what he's doing.
Ange gets a lot of things wrong.
Signings, team selection, in game management.
I have not completely given up on him - but in the words of the maestro: it's not dark yet but it's getting there.
Funny how Leicester have lost every game since they beat us at home. That alone should qualify for sack
I do t think you can say his improved as he never played so we have nothing to compare to. All we know is that he is half decent and Ange didn’t want play him.
Ruud needs to be backed and given at least 3 seasons ; look what Fergie went on to achieve.
Has Ange forgotten the £400M we have spent under his watch and we have got worse. Not even Poch got that level of spending.
Neither did anyone else.
That game was an embarrassment beyond words for us.
How he wasn't sacked after that farce is beyond me
More along the lines of "Ange's methods contributing to the injury crisis":
Even in the toughest moments, Ange Postecoglou has tried his best to laugh. In one game he feigned a hamstring injury after stretching for a ball on the touchline and in press conferences he has regularly invited journalists to make up the numbers in sessions. “You blokes could have joined in our training,” he said on Friday, “and I mean that seriously.”
Yet after defeat at Villa Park rounded off another miserable week in a miserable season for Tottenham Hotspur, the head coach shook his head and covered his face with his hands. Does this still look like a Postecoglou team? “I really don’t know how else to explain it,” he replied. “If you can’t see this team is trying to play with no rest, Thursday-Sunday, Thursday-Sunday, Thursday-Sunday . . . if you think that’s not at all a factor in how this team is performing, there’s nothing else I can say.”
The depths of Tottenham’s injury crisis are well documented, even if Postecoglou has been irritated by some sections of the media criticising his tactics without acknowledging his absentees. Spurs have not had a full squad available for a single match this season and since beating Aston Villa 4-1 on November 3, when they were three points off third in the Premier League table, they have never had fewer than five players out. In recent weeks that number has been teetering between ten and 12.
Vicario has missed the past 21 games in all competitions after an ankle injury against Man City but is set to return against Man United this weekend
ADAM VAUGHAN/EPA
In defence, where Tottenham have been hit hardest by injuries to the goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, Destiny Udogie, Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven, Postecoglou has fielded 18 different combinations of back four and goalkeeper. According to Premier Injuries, the database founded by Ben Dinnery, Spurs players have missed 949 days this season, the second-most in the division behind only Brighton & Hove Albion and significantly more than other clubs in Europe: Woolwich (728), Manchester City (664), Aston Villa (559), Liverpool (536) and Manchester United (493).
The big question for the Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy and technical director Johan Lange at the end of the season, or sooner if results do not improve, is whether this injury-ravaged campaign stems from bad luck or bad management. For his part, Postecoglou has never publicly placed the blame elsewhere. “Every decision that is made is on me,” he said on January 25. “If you’re looking for a head on a stick, take mine.”
But he also dismisses suggestions he could have responded differently, with other players or another approach. “You can walk outside and say, ‘Jeez, it’s really bright’, and say to yourself, ‘Maybe it’s not the sun,’ but it is the sun, mate,” he said in the same press conference. “We’ve just got injuries.”
This is not a one-off for Postecoglou, who had injury problems at Brisbane Roar, Yokohama Marinos and Celtic. Each time, the players struggled with the intensity of his methods, adjusted and then excelled, establishing his record of always winning a trophy in his second year.
Van de Ven has played just twice for Spurs since October 30 and is not expected to come back until next month
DYLAN MARTINEZ/REUTERS
At Tottenham, his belief was that the same would happen again, even as they were derailed last season by injuries to Van de Ven (hamstring), James Maddison (ankle) and Rodrigo Bentancur (ankle) in November, before Udogie (hamstring), Timo Werner (thigh) and Richarlison (hamstring) went down in the final weeks. Medical staff said training was too aggressive, pointing to data for sprint distances and high-intensity distances as evidence, but Postecoglou insisted the tempo had to be maintained for the players to adjust.
At the end of last season Tottenham sacked their long-standing head of medicine and sports science, Geoff Scott, who had been at the club for 20 years. Scott fell out with Postecoglou over the Australian’s high-intensity training methods and his approach to recovery, although the club say Scott’s departure was part of a wider review and restructuring of the medical department, and nothing to do with Postecoglou. Scott was replaced by Adam Brett, who was previously at Brighton and is now Tottenham’s director of performance services.
There was some logic to Postecoglou sticking to his guns, given his success has always centred on physical prowess, with his “we never stop” mantra hardwired into his coaching. But it is hard not to see a link between that same breathless approach and the spate of soft-tissue, and particularly hamstring, injuries at Tottenham. This season alone, nine players (Van de Ven, Romero, Udogie, Ben Davies, Son Heung-min, Yves Bissouma, Richarlison, Werner and Wilson Odobert) have suffered hamstring injuries while, according to Premier Injuries, 39 per cent of Tottenham’s injury problems have been hamstring related, compared with the league average of 23.5 per cent.
Dr Adam Field, lecturer in sport science and elite performance at Manchester Metropolitan University, estimates that “around half of hamstring injuries are caused during sprinting”, which is one area where Tottenham trump everyone else. This season, Spurs are top for overall sprints (4,200) and top for pressures made by a player sprinting (812) in the Premier League.
Postecoglou’s squad, which started the season with 18 senior outfield players, was never equipped to play such a demanding schedule
CATHERINE IVILL – AMA/GETTY IMAGES
Stylistically, Postecoglou’s side are unusual, given they run aggressively both in and out of possession. Most teams commit either to pressing hard off the ball and resting on the ball (Woolwich, Liverpool, Brighton) or vice versa, so they drop off out of possession and play fast when they win it back (Nottingham Forest, Everton, Crystal Palace). Yet Spurs go lights-out in both. They are the most aggressive pressers in the league (9.4 opposition passes per defensive action) and also the fourth-fastest attackers (2.11 metres per second). Only Bournemouth, who are not competing in Europe this season, are also in the top five for both.
This means there is no let-up, even down to the little details like Tottenham being the quickest side at restarts with an average delay time of only 23.8 seconds. Everywhere you look, Postecoglou’s team want to outplay, outpress and outrun the opposition.
Whether this approach is sustainable in the Premier League would be up for debate even if conditions were perfect. But Tottenham, who started the season with only 18 senior outfield players, were never equipped to last. Van de Ven, Richarlison, Odobert and Son breaking down in the first ten games started a vicious circle where injuries place a strain on the ones left, which leads to further injuries and greater strain again. By December, several of Postecoglou’s picks were playing in what medical staff call “the red zone”.
Postecoglou has been unlucky too. Bentancur was banned for seven matches after he used a racial slur about Son on Uruguayan television and has twice been out with head injuries. Bissouma was suspended by the club for inhaling laughing gas, while Vicario broke his ankle when collecting a bouncing ball against Manchester City and Solanke twisted his knee when taking a shot in training. “Sometimes no one’s to blame,” Postecoglou said. “We’re going through a bad trot.”
Yet he could have played Sergio Reguilón, who was a regular under José Mourinho but hasn’t started a single Premier League game this season. Djed Spence, a revelation in recent weeks, didn’t come in until December 15. Mikey Moore, the 17-year-old winger, was promoted but other academy players have been held back with Postecoglou insisting he didn’t want to “expose young players” and “destroy careers”.
Instead, he turned to a trusted core. Since November, Pedro Porro (first), Archie Gray (eighth) and Radu Dragusin (tenth) are in the top ten most-played defenders in Europe while Dejan Kulusevski is third for midfielders and Son fourth for attackers. Spurs are the only European team with a player in the top five for highest usage in every position.
Son is among a host of Spurs players who rank in the top ten in usage for their position across Europe
CHLOE KNOTT/TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR FC/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
Even worse than the spate of new injuries were the recurring ones. Odobert, a £25million signing from Burnley last summer, injured a hamstring on September 18 and returned on October 24, only to undergo surgery on November 17 after injuring “the same area”, Postecoglou said. Richarlison suffered a hamstring injury three weeks after recovering from a calf problem and now has a calf problem three weeks after recovering from a hamstring injury. Son and Davies also came back, only to drop down again almost immediately.
Van de Ven and Romero’s fleeting returns in November appear to have been particularly misjudged. Both unexpectedly started against Chelsea on December 8 after Van de Ven had missed five weeks with a hamstring injury and Romero had been struggling with a toe problem for more than a month. Neither made it through the match as Romero was forced off in the 15th minute and Van de Ven went off in the 79th, both with hamstring problems. They are yet to play again in the league, despite Van de Ven appearing for 45 minutes against Elfsborg in Europe on January 30. On Friday Postecoglou put them in a group of players expected to return in “two to three weeks”.
Postecoglou insists those looking for someone to blame for recurring problems are living “in the world of hindsight” but insiders at Tottenham believe he rolls the dice too often and too freely. Players who have completed their recommended “sprint distance” will stay on longer than planned even though the risk rate of recurrence for a player returning from a hamstring injury, for example, doubles after an hour. The advice on Van de Ven against Chelsea was 60 minutes but he kept playing until the 79th, after Romero had already gone off.
Tottenham have a best-in-class training ground with facilities for recovery that are the envy of most clubs in the Premier League. But some at Spurs believe certain players are not always meeting the highest standards with their recovery routines, particularly on days off when they are given guidance for what to do away from the training ground.
Postecoglou may have to wait until the end of the season to build any resilience within his squad
MIKE EGERTON/PA WIRE
Sleep, in particular, is viewed as a crucial factor in injury prevention, which is why crammed schedules and European travel commitments can be so disruptive. There was some surprise when a sickness bug hit a handful of players before the game against Newcastle United on January 4, just after Postecoglou had given the team time off following the draw with Wolverhampton Wanderers six days earlier.
Postecoglou cannot be accused of burying his head in the sand. He is self-critical and looking for solutions, even if a wider medical review will have to wait until May. Already this week there have been discussions and visits around plans for pre-season amid suggestions the players may have been recalled too early last year and then, ironically, trained too lightly.
The close season is the one period when resilience can be properly built in and as other clubs like Woolwich and Manchester City have learnt to their cost, squad depth is now the biggest trump card in the era of congestion, when injuries, rest and rotation all have to be baked in.
If Postecoglou has new ideas, will he be given time to implement them? In a season of strains and setbacks, his own recovery is far from guaranteed.
Inside story of the injury crisis ravaging Tottenham Hotspur
Ange Postecoglou has pointed to a demanding schedule as he grapples with an absentee list that could fill a starting XI — but his intense methods could be the problem
February 07 2025, 10.30pm GMT
Even in the toughest moments, Ange Postecoglou has tried his best to laugh. In one game he feigned a hamstring injury after stretching for a ball on the touchline and in press conferences he has regularly invited journalists to make up the numbers in sessions. “You blokes could have joined in our training,” he said on Friday, “and I mean that seriously.”
Yet after defeat at Villa Park rounded off another miserable week in a miserable season for Tottenham Hotspur, the head coach shook his head and covered his face with his hands. Does this still look like a Postecoglou team? “I really don’t know how else to explain it,” he replied. “If you can’t see this team is trying to play with no rest, Thursday-Sunday, Thursday-Sunday, Thursday-Sunday . . . if you think that’s not at all a factor in how this team is performing, there’s nothing else I can say.”
The depths of Tottenham’s injury crisis are well documented, even if Postecoglou has been irritated by some sections of the media criticising his tactics without acknowledging his absentees. Spurs have not had a full squad available for a single match this season and since beating Aston Villa 4-1 on November 3, when they were three points off third in the Premier League table, they have never had fewer than five players out. In recent weeks that number has been teetering between ten and 12.
Vicario has missed the past 21 games in all competitions after an ankle injury against Man City but is set to return against Man United this weekend
ADAM VAUGHAN/EPA
In defence, where Tottenham have been hit hardest by injuries to the goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, Destiny Udogie, Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven, Postecoglou has fielded 18 different combinations of back four and goalkeeper. According to Premier Injuries, the database founded by Ben Dinnery, Spurs players have missed 949 days this season, the second-most in the division behind only Brighton & Hove Albion and significantly more than other clubs in Europe: Woolwich (728), Manchester City (664), Aston Villa (559), Liverpool (536) and Manchester United (493).
The big question for the Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy and technical director Johan Lange at the end of the season, or sooner if results do not improve, is whether this injury-ravaged campaign stems from bad luck or bad management. For his part, Postecoglou has never publicly placed the blame elsewhere. “Every decision that is made is on me,” he said on January 25. “If you’re looking for a head on a stick, take mine.”
But he also dismisses suggestions he could have responded differently, with other players or another approach. “You can walk outside and say, ‘Jeez, it’s really bright’, and say to yourself, ‘Maybe it’s not the sun,’ but it is the sun, mate,” he said in the same press conference. “We’ve just got injuries.”
This is not a one-off for Postecoglou, who had injury problems at Brisbane Roar, Yokohama Marinos and Celtic. Each time, the players struggled with the intensity of his methods, adjusted and then excelled, establishing his record of always winning a trophy in his second year.
Van de Ven has played just twice for Spurs since October 30 and is not expected to come back until next month
DYLAN MARTINEZ/REUTERS
At Tottenham, his belief was that the same would happen again, even as they were derailed last season by injuries to Van de Ven (hamstring), James Maddison (ankle) and Rodrigo Bentancur (ankle) in November, before Udogie (hamstring), Timo Werner (thigh) and Richarlison (hamstring) went down in the final weeks. Medical staff said training was too aggressive, pointing to data for sprint distances and high-intensity distances as evidence, but Postecoglou insisted the tempo had to be maintained for the players to adjust.
At the end of last season Tottenham sacked their long-standing head of medicine and sports science, Geoff Scott, who had been at the club for 20 years. Scott fell out with Postecoglou over the Australian’s high-intensity training methods and his approach to recovery, although the club say Scott’s departure was part of a wider review and restructuring of the medical department, and nothing to do with Postecoglou. Scott was replaced by Adam Brett, who was previously at Brighton and is now Tottenham’s director of performance services.
There was some logic to Postecoglou sticking to his guns, given his success has always centred on physical prowess, with his “we never stop” mantra hardwired into his coaching. But it is hard not to see a link between that same breathless approach and the spate of soft-tissue, and particularly hamstring, injuries at Tottenham. This season alone, nine players (Van de Ven, Romero, Udogie, Ben Davies, Son Heung-min, Yves Bissouma, Richarlison, Werner and Wilson Odobert) have suffered hamstring injuries while, according to Premier Injuries, 39 per cent of Tottenham’s injury problems have been hamstring related, compared with the league average of 23.5 per cent.
Dr Adam Field, lecturer in sport science and elite performance at Manchester Metropolitan University, estimates that “around half of hamstring injuries are caused during sprinting”, which is one area where Tottenham trump everyone else. This season, Spurs are top for overall sprints (4,200) and top for pressures made by a player sprinting (812) in the Premier League.
Postecoglou’s squad, which started the season with 18 senior outfield players, was never equipped to play such a demanding schedule
CATHERINE IVILL – AMA/GETTY IMAGES
Stylistically, Postecoglou’s side are unusual, given they run aggressively both in and out of possession. Most teams commit either to pressing hard off the ball and resting on the ball (Woolwich, Liverpool, Brighton) or vice versa, so they drop off out of possession and play fast when they win it back (Nottingham Forest, Everton, Crystal Palace). Yet Spurs go lights-out in both. They are the most aggressive pressers in the league (9.4 opposition passes per defensive action) and also the fourth-fastest attackers (2.11 metres per second). Only Bournemouth, who are not competing in Europe this season, are also in the top five for both.
This means there is no let-up, even down to the little details like Tottenham being the quickest side at restarts with an average delay time of only 23.8 seconds. Everywhere you look, Postecoglou’s team want to outplay, outpress and outrun the opposition.
Whether this approach is sustainable in the Premier League would be up for debate even if conditions were perfect. But Tottenham, who started the season with only 18 senior outfield players, were never equipped to last. Van de Ven, Richarlison, Odobert and Son breaking down in the first ten games started a vicious circle where injuries place a strain on the ones left, which leads to further injuries and greater strain again. By December, several of Postecoglou’s picks were playing in what medical staff call “the red zone”.
Postecoglou has been unlucky too. Bentancur was banned for seven matches after he used a racial slur about Son on Uruguayan television and has twice been out with head injuries. Bissouma was suspended by the club for inhaling laughing gas, while Vicario broke his ankle when collecting a bouncing ball against Manchester City and Solanke twisted his knee when taking a shot in training. “Sometimes no one’s to blame,” Postecoglou said. “We’re going through a bad trot.”
Yet he could have played Sergio Reguilón, who was a regular under José Mourinho but hasn’t started a single Premier League game this season. Djed Spence, a revelation in recent weeks, didn’t come in until December 15. Mikey Moore, the 17-year-old winger, was promoted but other academy players have been held back with Postecoglou insisting he didn’t want to “expose young players” and “destroy careers”.
Instead, he turned to a trusted core. Since November, Pedro Porro (first), Archie Gray (eighth) and Radu Dragusin (tenth) are in the top ten most-played defenders in Europe while Dejan Kulusevski is third for midfielders and Son fourth for attackers. Spurs are the only European team with a player in the top five for highest usage in every position.
Son is among a host of Spurs players who rank in the top ten in usage for their position across Europe
CHLOE KNOTT/TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR FC/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
Even worse than the spate of new injuries were the recurring ones. Odobert, a £25million signing from Burnley last summer, injured a hamstring on September 18 and returned on October 24, only to undergo surgery on November 17 after injuring “the same area”, Postecoglou said. Richarlison suffered a hamstring injury three weeks after recovering from a calf problem and now has a calf problem three weeks after recovering from a hamstring injury. Son and Davies also came back, only to drop down again almost immediately.
Van de Ven and Romero’s fleeting returns in November appear to have been particularly misjudged. Both unexpectedly started against Chelsea on December 8 after Van de Ven had missed five weeks with a hamstring injury and Romero had been struggling with a toe problem for more than a month. Neither made it through the match as Romero was forced off in the 15th minute and Van de Ven went off in the 79th, both with hamstring problems. They are yet to play again in the league, despite Van de Ven appearing for 45 minutes against Elfsborg in Europe on January 30. On Friday Postecoglou put them in a group of players expected to return in “two to three weeks”.
Tottenham’s injured players
Radu Dragusin (knee), Dominic Solanke (knee), Timo Werner (thigh), Cristian Romero (thigh), Brennan Johnson (calf/shin/heel), James Maddison (calf/shin/heel), Destiny Udogie (thigh), Guglielmo Vicario (ankle/foot), Micky van de Ven (thigh), Richarlison (calf/shin/heel), Wilson Odobert (thigh)Postecoglou insists those looking for someone to blame for recurring problems are living “in the world of hindsight” but insiders at Tottenham believe he rolls the dice too often and too freely. Players who have completed their recommended “sprint distance” will stay on longer than planned even though the risk rate of recurrence for a player returning from a hamstring injury, for example, doubles after an hour. The advice on Van de Ven against Chelsea was 60 minutes but he kept playing until the 79th, after Romero had already gone off.
Tottenham have a best-in-class training ground with facilities for recovery that are the envy of most clubs in the Premier League. But some at Spurs believe certain players are not always meeting the highest standards with their recovery routines, particularly on days off when they are given guidance for what to do away from the training ground.
Postecoglou may have to wait until the end of the season to build any resilience within his squad
MIKE EGERTON/PA WIRE
Sleep, in particular, is viewed as a crucial factor in injury prevention, which is why crammed schedules and European travel commitments can be so disruptive. There was some surprise when a sickness bug hit a handful of players before the game against Newcastle United on January 4, just after Postecoglou had given the team time off following the draw with Wolverhampton Wanderers six days earlier.
Postecoglou cannot be accused of burying his head in the sand. He is self-critical and looking for solutions, even if a wider medical review will have to wait until May. Already this week there have been discussions and visits around plans for pre-season amid suggestions the players may have been recalled too early last year and then, ironically, trained too lightly.
The close season is the one period when resilience can be properly built in and as other clubs like Woolwich and Manchester City have learnt to their cost, squad depth is now the biggest trump card in the era of congestion, when injuries, rest and rotation all have to be baked in.
If Postecoglou has new ideas, will he be given time to implement them? In a season of strains and setbacks, his own recovery is far from guaranteed.
More along the lines of "Ange's methods contributing to the injury crisis":
Inside story of the injury crisis ravaging Tottenham Hotspur
Ange Postecoglou has pointed to a demanding schedule as he grapples with an absentee list that could fill a starting XI — but his intense methods could be the problem
February 07 2025, 10.30pm GMT
Even in the toughest moments, Ange Postecoglou has tried his best to laugh. In one game he feigned a hamstring injury after stretching for a ball on the touchline and in press conferences he has regularly invited journalists to make up the numbers in sessions. “You blokes could have joined in our training,” he said on Friday, “and I mean that seriously.”
Yet after defeat at Villa Park rounded off another miserable week in a miserable season for Tottenham Hotspur, the head coach shook his head and covered his face with his hands. Does this still look like a Postecoglou team? “I really don’t know how else to explain it,” he replied. “If you can’t see this team is trying to play with no rest, Thursday-Sunday, Thursday-Sunday, Thursday-Sunday . . . if you think that’s not at all a factor in how this team is performing, there’s nothing else I can say.”
The depths of Tottenham’s injury crisis are well documented, even if Postecoglou has been irritated by some sections of the media criticising his tactics without acknowledging his absentees. Spurs have not had a full squad available for a single match this season and since beating Aston Villa 4-1 on November 3, when they were three points off third in the Premier League table, they have never had fewer than five players out. In recent weeks that number has been teetering between ten and 12.
Vicario has missed the past 21 games in all competitions after an ankle injury against Man City but is set to return against Man United this weekend
ADAM VAUGHAN/EPA
In defence, where Tottenham have been hit hardest by injuries to the goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, Destiny Udogie, Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven, Postecoglou has fielded 18 different combinations of back four and goalkeeper. According to Premier Injuries, the database founded by Ben Dinnery, Spurs players have missed 949 days this season, the second-most in the division behind only Brighton & Hove Albion and significantly more than other clubs in Europe: Woolwich (728), Manchester City (664), Aston Villa (559), Liverpool (536) and Manchester United (493).
The big question for the Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy and technical director Johan Lange at the end of the season, or sooner if results do not improve, is whether this injury-ravaged campaign stems from bad luck or bad management. For his part, Postecoglou has never publicly placed the blame elsewhere. “Every decision that is made is on me,” he said on January 25. “If you’re looking for a head on a stick, take mine.”
But he also dismisses suggestions he could have responded differently, with other players or another approach. “You can walk outside and say, ‘Jeez, it’s really bright’, and say to yourself, ‘Maybe it’s not the sun,’ but it is the sun, mate,” he said in the same press conference. “We’ve just got injuries.”
This is not a one-off for Postecoglou, who had injury problems at Brisbane Roar, Yokohama Marinos and Celtic. Each time, the players struggled with the intensity of his methods, adjusted and then excelled, establishing his record of always winning a trophy in his second year.
Van de Ven has played just twice for Spurs since October 30 and is not expected to come back until next month
DYLAN MARTINEZ/REUTERS
At Tottenham, his belief was that the same would happen again, even as they were derailed last season by injuries to Van de Ven (hamstring), James Maddison (ankle) and Rodrigo Bentancur (ankle) in November, before Udogie (hamstring), Timo Werner (thigh) and Richarlison (hamstring) went down in the final weeks. Medical staff said training was too aggressive, pointing to data for sprint distances and high-intensity distances as evidence, but Postecoglou insisted the tempo had to be maintained for the players to adjust.
At the end of last season Tottenham sacked their long-standing head of medicine and sports science, Geoff Scott, who had been at the club for 20 years. Scott fell out with Postecoglou over the Australian’s high-intensity training methods and his approach to recovery, although the club say Scott’s departure was part of a wider review and restructuring of the medical department, and nothing to do with Postecoglou. Scott was replaced by Adam Brett, who was previously at Brighton and is now Tottenham’s director of performance services.
There was some logic to Postecoglou sticking to his guns, given his success has always centred on physical prowess, with his “we never stop” mantra hardwired into his coaching. But it is hard not to see a link between that same breathless approach and the spate of soft-tissue, and particularly hamstring, injuries at Tottenham. This season alone, nine players (Van de Ven, Romero, Udogie, Ben Davies, Son Heung-min, Yves Bissouma, Richarlison, Werner and Wilson Odobert) have suffered hamstring injuries while, according to Premier Injuries, 39 per cent of Tottenham’s injury problems have been hamstring related, compared with the league average of 23.5 per cent.
Dr Adam Field, lecturer in sport science and elite performance at Manchester Metropolitan University, estimates that “around half of hamstring injuries are caused during sprinting”, which is one area where Tottenham trump everyone else. This season, Spurs are top for overall sprints (4,200) and top for pressures made by a player sprinting (812) in the Premier League.
Postecoglou’s squad, which started the season with 18 senior outfield players, was never equipped to play such a demanding schedule
CATHERINE IVILL – AMA/GETTY IMAGES
Stylistically, Postecoglou’s side are unusual, given they run aggressively both in and out of possession. Most teams commit either to pressing hard off the ball and resting on the ball (Woolwich, Liverpool, Brighton) or vice versa, so they drop off out of possession and play fast when they win it back (Nottingham Forest, Everton, Crystal Palace). Yet Spurs go lights-out in both. They are the most aggressive pressers in the league (9.4 opposition passes per defensive action) and also the fourth-fastest attackers (2.11 metres per second). Only Bournemouth, who are not competing in Europe this season, are also in the top five for both.
This means there is no let-up, even down to the little details like Tottenham being the quickest side at restarts with an average delay time of only 23.8 seconds. Everywhere you look, Postecoglou’s team want to outplay, outpress and outrun the opposition.
Whether this approach is sustainable in the Premier League would be up for debate even if conditions were perfect. But Tottenham, who started the season with only 18 senior outfield players, were never equipped to last. Van de Ven, Richarlison, Odobert and Son breaking down in the first ten games started a vicious circle where injuries place a strain on the ones left, which leads to further injuries and greater strain again. By December, several of Postecoglou’s picks were playing in what medical staff call “the red zone”.
Postecoglou has been unlucky too. Bentancur was banned for seven matches after he used a racial slur about Son on Uruguayan television and has twice been out with head injuries. Bissouma was suspended by the club for inhaling laughing gas, while Vicario broke his ankle when collecting a bouncing ball against Manchester City and Solanke twisted his knee when taking a shot in training. “Sometimes no one’s to blame,” Postecoglou said. “We’re going through a bad trot.”
Yet he could have played Sergio Reguilón, who was a regular under José Mourinho but hasn’t started a single Premier League game this season. Djed Spence, a revelation in recent weeks, didn’t come in until December 15. Mikey Moore, the 17-year-old winger, was promoted but other academy players have been held back with Postecoglou insisting he didn’t want to “expose young players” and “destroy careers”.
Instead, he turned to a trusted core. Since November, Pedro Porro (first), Archie Gray (eighth) and Radu Dragusin (tenth) are in the top ten most-played defenders in Europe while Dejan Kulusevski is third for midfielders and Son fourth for attackers. Spurs are the only European team with a player in the top five for highest usage in every position.
Son is among a host of Spurs players who rank in the top ten in usage for their position across Europe
CHLOE KNOTT/TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR FC/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
Even worse than the spate of new injuries were the recurring ones. Odobert, a £25million signing from Burnley last summer, injured a hamstring on September 18 and returned on October 24, only to undergo surgery on November 17 after injuring “the same area”, Postecoglou said. Richarlison suffered a hamstring injury three weeks after recovering from a calf problem and now has a calf problem three weeks after recovering from a hamstring injury. Son and Davies also came back, only to drop down again almost immediately.
Van de Ven and Romero’s fleeting returns in November appear to have been particularly misjudged. Both unexpectedly started against Chelsea on December 8 after Van de Ven had missed five weeks with a hamstring injury and Romero had been struggling with a toe problem for more than a month. Neither made it through the match as Romero was forced off in the 15th minute and Van de Ven went off in the 79th, both with hamstring problems. They are yet to play again in the league, despite Van de Ven appearing for 45 minutes against Elfsborg in Europe on January 30. On Friday Postecoglou put them in a group of players expected to return in “two to three weeks”.
Tottenham’s injured players
Radu Dragusin (knee), Dominic Solanke (knee), Timo Werner (thigh), Cristian Romero (thigh), Brennan Johnson (calf/shin/heel), James Maddison (calf/shin/heel), Destiny Udogie (thigh), Guglielmo Vicario (ankle/foot), Micky van de Ven (thigh), Richarlison (calf/shin/heel), Wilson Odobert (thigh)
Postecoglou insists those looking for someone to blame for recurring problems are living “in the world of hindsight” but insiders at Tottenham believe he rolls the dice too often and too freely. Players who have completed their recommended “sprint distance” will stay on longer than planned even though the risk rate of recurrence for a player returning from a hamstring injury, for example, doubles after an hour. The advice on Van de Ven against Chelsea was 60 minutes but he kept playing until the 79th, after Romero had already gone off.
Tottenham have a best-in-class training ground with facilities for recovery that are the envy of most clubs in the Premier League. But some at Spurs believe certain players are not always meeting the highest standards with their recovery routines, particularly on days off when they are given guidance for what to do away from the training ground.
Postecoglou may have to wait until the end of the season to build any resilience within his squad
MIKE EGERTON/PA WIRE
Sleep, in particular, is viewed as a crucial factor in injury prevention, which is why crammed schedules and European travel commitments can be so disruptive. There was some surprise when a sickness bug hit a handful of players before the game against Newcastle United on January 4, just after Postecoglou had given the team time off following the draw with Wolverhampton Wanderers six days earlier.
Postecoglou cannot be accused of burying his head in the sand. He is self-critical and looking for solutions, even if a wider medical review will have to wait until May. Already this week there have been discussions and visits around plans for pre-season amid suggestions the players may have been recalled too early last year and then, ironically, trained too lightly.
The close season is the one period when resilience can be properly built in and as other clubs like Woolwich and Manchester City have learnt to their cost, squad depth is now the biggest trump card in the era of congestion, when injuries, rest and rotation all have to be baked in.
If Postecoglou has new ideas, will he be given time to implement them? In a season of strains and setbacks, his own recovery is far from guaranteed.
Whoever wrote this must have read our forum extensively. It sounds exactly like our collective discussion a couple weeks back.
thats true. it was more making the point that he tried to ostracise him and hes been shown up yet again as the fool he is.
As well as losing to Ipswich and Everton. Very very bad, no matter how depleted our squad was. Players sent out to play in those matches shouldn't have drawn if we considered the opponents worse plight, much less losing them. I thought I can stomach these results, but they get worse as the season goes as these teams revert back to shit.
He has also made a rod for himself again by saying wait until players return and we will do something g special. Thing is how many clubs have all their best players available all the time? Even if we have say 2 players out he will say he still has got injuries.