As pressure further mounts on Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou, his team seem to be coming apart piece by piece as multiple angles emerge showcasing him in a not-too-positive light.
The 59-year-old has already been panned for having too rigid tactics, but criticism is also emerging for the role he seemingly has played in Tottenham’s injury issues in his time at the club, with a recent report suggesting his players are unhappy about the way things are on the training pitch.
In a recent interview, Tottenham fullback Pedro Porro discussed, among other things, life on the training pitch under Postecoglou.
“We have a plan for all of our training. Those players who aren’t playing so much have their own plan to come back and me too, I train at the club but I also do my own work outside the club, recovery work, prevention of injury.
“Everyone has their own schedule, if the training sessions are less intense it’s for those players coming back, they have the training they need, and also for the players who are playing, we need a lot of recovery.”
Porro talking training under Postecoglou, as quoted by Football London.
Additionally, Football London’s Tottenham correspondent Alasdair Gold also addressed the injury and training matters at the club recently in an appearance on Gold & Guest Talk Tottenham.
“I could set a reminder on my phone for every 18 months that stories will come out about the current Tottenham manager that training is either too much, not enough, stale or boring. It’s like clockwork every 18 months.”
“This is absolutely no dig at journalists, but it normally comes from people around players who are underperforming under that manager or a player who isn’t playing.
“But ultimately everything I’ve heard it’s not really possible for training sessions to be that intense.”
Gold, as quoted by TBR Football.
Gold further revealed what he’d gathered about Tottenham training under Postecoglou:
“From speaking to people around players and the first team, is that they’ve had so many fixtures – a game every three days for pretty much every week for the past three months.
“He gives them a day off after a match, the next day is usually a recovery day and there are loads of players who are carrying knocks and tiredness into the next matches.
“There are barely any sessions in this three-month period where they have a full session or anything resembling a full session. It just doesn’t really fit what they’re in right now.
“Look he’s been in management 26 years, he’s not an idiot, he’s not going to look at them being tired and run them into the ground. It makes no sense whatsoever, from what I understand, they are not able to get intense sessions in.”
A recent Daily Mail report looked into the matter and found out that, while Tottenham’s injury situation had in fact worsened under Postecoglou, it was not particularly good under Antonio Conte either, who himself is famous for running an extreme training regimen.
To say that injuries and tight training schedules are a Tottenham problem or a Postecoglou one exclusively would simply be incorrect. It’s part of the footballing ecosystem now. The club needs to look only at the other side of North London, as Arsenal is dealing with its own set of injury issues. Even issues like player complaints is not an alien concept for managers who are under fire due to poor results.
That said if you are a side like Tottenham, playing in the Premier League and always there and thereabouts in Europe, you have to brace yourself for an excruciating campaign, especially when English football is concerned. This is amid what can easily be deemed one of the most unsustainable football calendars in the history of the sport, with players complaining about the extra burden and going down in record numbers all across the board.
This is where the situation becomes particularly tricky for Spurs. In an era already dealing with a record number of games and injuries, they entered into a marriage with Postecoglou at a time when injuries were already a concern for them (lest we forget, they launched an investigation into their own medical team not too long ago), and brought on board a manager who had a worrying injury record at Celtic as well. But it’s easier to justify that when you’re at one of the two biggest clubs in the league and winning comprehensively.
More Tottenham News:
In a way, this is another example of Ange Postecoglou finding it hard to adapt to the increased difficulty of his European football journey. The calendar is not getting better any time soon, so you’re going to have to adapt your training regimen in such a way that most players can sustain themselves over a 60-game season. This is not a challenge exclusive to Postecoglou, of course, but as usual, those who adapt to it best will come out victors in the long run.
