So this season has been testing in more ways than one, Ange has stated he had to ‘manage’ his players with so many games and injuries to contend with to the point his players were fatigued.
The injuries cannot be disputed and even the biggest squads would have been stretched with this sort of injury list. However, how many games have we actually needed to deal with this season? Is it really a lot? How many players were over played?
To get an idea I thought we would compare our fixture list this season with that of Liverpool’s. They have also had more than one cup run to juggle and are a good club to compare with as they too work on a restricted budget, in contrast to the likes of Man City or Chelsea.
So first of all let’s look at Liverpool, once they have played there final league games:
Premiership: 1st (winners)
FA Cup: 4th Round (2 matches)
League Cup: Runners Up (6 matches)
Champions League: Round of 16 (10 matches)
Total number of matches played: 56 Matches
Ok, so now let’s look at Tottenham, including there remaining 2 fixtures:
Premiership: 17th (expected)
FA Cup: 4th Round (2 matches)
League Cup: Semi-final (5 matches)
Europa Cup: Final (15 matches)
Total number of matches played: 60 Matches
We can see from this list that both teams played almost the same number of games, I don’t think we can call 4 additional games over the course of a season a substantial difference.
So the next thing I want to do is look at the total number of games the first 11 have played this season. I will use Tottenham’s 11 players that played in the recent 2nd Leg Semi final at Bodo and compare these players against Liverpool’s first 11 that hammered us 5-1 just last month.
Vicario (32 games) – Becker (33 games)
Porro (49) games – Arnold (43 games)
Romero (25 games) – Konate (40 games)
Van de Ven (20 games) – Van Dijk (48 games)
Udogie (34 games) – Robertson (44 games)
Bentancur (42 games) – Gravenberch (47 games)
Bissouma (42 games) – MacAllister (49 games)
Johnson (49 games) – Salah (50 games)
Kulusevski (50 games) – Szoboszlai (47 games)
Richarlison (22 games) – Gakpo (47 games)
Solanke (43 games) – Diaz (48 games)
As you can see with the exception of Porro and Kulusevski, Liverpool’s first 11 have played more games. This doesn’t take into account the rest of the squad and also does not include international commitments which could potentially make these differences even bigger.
Of course we can explain these lower numbers for the Spurs players down to the injuries and the need for more squad rotation, but there’s no evidence of any players being over played. So are these players genuinely fatigued or is this just another convenient excuse from the book of ‘how to avoid the sack’ by Ange Postecoglou.
We know this squad has suffered injuries and we know they have lost all rhythm and momentum throughout the season, but fatigue, that’s seems a bit of a stretch. Is Ange trying to tell us that a Professional athlete is not capable of playing 30-40 games in a season? Who is he trying to kid?
The only person who looks fatigued to me is Ange answering the journalists questions.
Grumble over:)
COYS!!!!!!