Tottenham struggled with a boatload of injuries in the 2025/26 season.
Tottenham Hotspur are investigating whether the retractable pitch at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium has played a role in the club’s catastrophic injury record, according to CentreGoals on X, after suffering more days lost to injury than any other Premier League club this season, with a staggering 370 games missed.
The inquiry represents a significant and overdue acknowledgment that the scale of Tottenham’s injury problems across two consecutive seasons cannot simply be attributed to bad luck or coincidence. With 123 injuries recorded since the start of the 2024-25 campaign, including a troubling number of serious knee injuries and ACL issues, the club is right to examine every possible contributing factor with rigorous honesty.
The retractable pitch, one of the most innovative and celebrated features of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium when it was unveiled, has come under scrutiny as a potential source of the problem. The system, which slides the grass playing surface in and out of the stadium to allow the artificial surface beneath to be used for NFL fixtures and other events, is unique in English football and raises legitimate questions about whether the transition between surfaces, or the specific characteristics of the grass pitch itself, may be placing players at greater physical risk than a conventional stadium surface would.
External testing on the pitch has already taken place, though the results have so far proven inconclusive. Further analysis is planned, suggesting the club is taking the investigation seriously rather than treating it as a box-ticking exercise.
Tottenham’s 2025-26 season was derailed by injuries
The human cost of the injury record has been impossible to overstate. James Maddison missed the entire season with an ACL injury sustained in pre-season. Dejan Kulusevski sidelined for 12 months with a patella problem, and still is. Xavi Simons suffered an ACL injury that ruled him out of the final weeks of the season. The list extends across virtually every area of the squad and has undermined the efforts of three different managers throughout the campaign.
If the retractable pitch is identified as a contributing factor, the club faces a significant and costly decision about how to address it. But the consequences of leaving the issue unresolved are even more significant. No rebuild, however ambitious or well-funded, can succeed if the playing surface keeps sending players to the operating table.