If there’s one thing that frustrates managers more than most things, it’s injuries and the amount of time it takes for their players to recover.
Tottenham Hotspur is no different and there’s always been this perception from the fans that recovery times at the north London club seem to extend in their timeframe after their initial diagnosis.
Knocks and twinges become month-long absences and some problems become worse and worse, as poor Erik Lamela knows well with his 13-month absence with hip problems that took him to Italy and various treatments before eventually requiring surgery on both of his hips.
No doubt all football clubs struggle with getting recovery times spot on, and complications will always arise, but Spurs certainly seem to have had more than their share of bad luck with injuries, particularly when it comes to new signings.
Take the summer signings of 2019 for example. Giovani Lo Celso picked up a hip injury on his first international break just weeks after joining the club and struggled with numerous injury problems in the subsequent years.
Ryan Sessegnon arrived with a serious hamstring injury and has had problems with them since, although, fingers crossed, he’s now getting a run of games under his belt.
Tanguy Ndombele would also pick up little niggling problems that caused him and his managers no end of frustration.
Even last summer, the club’s big signing Cristian Romero suffered his own serious hamstring injury that kept him out for three months.
The current frustration for Antonio Conte is the problems Oliver Skipp has been having.
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The 21-year-old has quickly become a firm favourite of the Italian’s and the stats clearly show that when he’s in the starting line-up Spurs win most of their matches. Without him, they’ve struggled to emerge victorious without his drive, energy and reading of the game.
Conte believes he can become one of the top midfielders in the game and with Spurs struggling for consistency, he wants him back from a groin injury.
However, that groin problem, which was labelled a little issue by the head coach to begin with, was complicated by an infection in the area suffered by Skipp during his treatment.
Each week Conte has spoken about trying to rush the medical department to get the young midfielder back and Skipp was expected to start light training this week and then join up with his team-mates next week.
However, Conte’s mood on Friday when speaking about Skipp suggested the problem has not been sorted.
“He’s not ready, he’s having this problem with groin pain, and is fighting and he could recover before but maybe something was wrong, and now we have to wait,” he said.
Managers and medical departments often have a strange relationship, the former seeing the latter as being there to serve them and their selection demands and some coaches art various clubs casts the physios as their overly cautious enemy.
Spurs’ medical department were thrust out into the open again by Conte over the Skipp saga.
“Oliver Skipp… it is a pity I think in England that sometimes you should have a conference with the medical department. The doctors, it is too easy for the doctors to work here, because they don’t speak, they don’t explain what happens, you understand?” Conte said.
“Sometimes I think that could be good, one day, if in two weeks, to have a good press conference with the medical department to explain about the situation of the players, about the situation that they are trying to take care of their players. It is too easy for the medical department in England, I think so.”
When it comes to clarity over injuries Spurs are not the best, the club often citing medical privacy for their lack of details and expected timeframes.
Even when it comes to Covid cases, while other clubs have been mostly naming their affected players, no doubt with their approval, Spurs just don’t unless the player has first revealed it themselves on social media.
That all of the Spurs players say they don’t want that information out there seems unlikely and it’s more likely that the club just want to try to keep things in house.
That creates a bizarre situation where we, the media, know which players have Covid because it’s our job to find out such things but we can’t report it due to medical confidentiality if there’s been no approval given by the player. When it comes to writing about those players’ absences it’s been a strange rigmarole.
Spurs have been burned in the past over clarifying injuries and absences. Mauricio Pochettino used to be quite clear with his injury updates, delivered to him by his second in command Jesus Perez.
However, his public frustration over the unexpectedly long absence of Toby Alderweireld, after he had declared he would be back soon, led to a big swing in his policy and the Argentine began saying very little about expected return dates.
The journalists would instead be sent a list of injury updates by the press officer moments before the press conferences began to save Pochettino having to field questions about the problems.
That stopped after that era and now it’s about getting what information we can as journalists, from sources inside and outside the club.
You can see the frustration on Conte’s face when he speaks about injuries.
Those who watched Amazon’s All or Nothing documentary series on Spurs will have seen Jose Mourinho’s fractious relationship with the club’s medical department, something we’ve seen glimpses of at his previous clubs.
Spurs’ head of medicine and sports science Geoff Scott was shown having to deliver updates to the Portuguese, who was definitely one to shoot the messenger and you felt sorry for the long-serving Tottenham man, particularly when he had to give news on Son Heung-min’s arm injury, which ended up being more serious than most assumed.
The New Zealander has been at Spurs for almost 18 years, having joined as the head of physiotherapy from Fulham in 2004 and he has seen it all and treated it all at the Premier League club.
He and his staff probably won’t be delighted at their latest public outing in front of the media by Conte, which will have fed the narrative among the fans, and we’re unlikely to see the Kiwi holding his own weekly press conference at Hotspur Way to discuss the latest injury woes.
It’s not just injuries though as pro-active clarity is not exactly something Spurs excel in when it comes to most issues at the club.
With someone like Conte – who has no issues with speaking his mind – at the helm and unlikely to hold back, the months ahead are going to be fascinating when it comes to his views on a range of subjects surrounding the club.
https://www.football.london/tottenham-hotspur-fc/news/antonio-conte-spurs-medical-department-23297915