Just a couple of hours ago I posted an article about how reports on Micky van de Ven’s injury prognosis are a Rorschach test of your Spurs fandom. Well, here’s another set of ink blots for you to read: Gareth Southgate has called up James Maddison to the England squad for the upcoming international break.
First of all — yes, there’s another international break coming and no, I don’t know why they keep doing this. But apart from that, your reaction to Southgate calling up Maddison is again either going to make your average Spurs fan angry, or optimistic that his ankle knock that he picked up against Chelsea maybe isn’t so bad.
For whatever its’ worth, Southgate gave a general update on the health of some of his England players going into the break, and while Maddison wasn’t specifically named you can certainly draw some positive inferences by reading between the lines.
“Some of those [players with knocks] we could lose one today after a scan, we could lose one tomorrow. We don’t really know. You’d be amazed at how complicated it is picking a squad because all clubs are of course sensitive to information and you’re trying to piece everything together.
“So I couldn’t be certain that everybody that is in that squad will be there on Sunday night [when the squad reports for duty], varying levels of doubt. With that Callum is probably the biggest level of doubt, Callum Wilson, but equally I’m pretty confident that the others can get through and they’re all keen to be in the squad so that’s a really good sign.”
Yeah, that IS a really good sign. There have been suggestions that Maddison has been playing through minor knocks for much of the opening part of the season and that the club have been basically keeping him in bubble wrap when he’s not on the pitch. So if you’re an optimistic type, the fact that Southgate feels comfortable calling him up and Madders feels comfortable with wanting to be around the squad is a good sign.
That’s not meant to indicate that Maddison will be ready to feature for Tottenham this Saturday at Wolves. There’s still a lot we don’t know and Ange Postecoglou will make whatever decision he needs to for the health and betterment of the squad. But you know? Like I said before, it could be worse.