Tottenham fans have been left worried by growing rumours of a serious injury to one of their star new signings over the last day or so. Excitement among Spurs fans is at a real high after a £237million spending bill that has seen the North London club sign the likes of Sandro Tonali, Mateus Fernandes and Jan Paul van Hecke among others.
Roberto De Zerbi is being backed like no Spurs boss before him, with the club commissioning a club-record spend so far this summer, and it's expected the spending will continue, leading to an attacking signing or two between now and the end of the window in early September.
In the meantime, Tottenham are currently working on their fitness with pre-season preparations in Australia, specifically in Sydney, and De Zerbi is putting the players through their paces, which will come as no surprise given the fitness demands of the way his teams play the game.
Tottenham's Mateus Fernandes injury fears eased
After footage emerged of Fernandes sitting out a training session in Australia, fans began to speculate that he might have an injury, and those rumours quickly graduated to talk of a serious injury like an ACL rupture. But according to Alasdair Gold of Football.London, the rumours are unfounded, and there is no concern over a serious injury.
Fernandes is expected to sit out Tottenham's next pre-season friendly, according to the report, but it part of De Zerbi requiring a high workload of the players who were part of the initial pre-season group, which excluded the World Cup participants.
The hard work required of those players early on has meant the club has had to monitor their fitness levels closely, and those in danger of being overworked, or indeed those with some early summer niggles, will sit out sessions, or even games, to avoid any true risk of a significant injury. Clearly, De Zerbi values the hard work in training more than the pre-season games, and it will be interesting to see what results are yielded, given the injury troubles Tottenham have had over the last couple of years.
But De Zerbi wants fitter and faster, and that's not an easy process for players during a hard, and usually hot, pre-season. The good news for Spurs fans is that Fernandes appears to be fine.
Reality check for Spurs players
Many Tottenham players have spoken about the ambition shown by De Zerbi about this Spurs project, and even Fernandes himself said when signing: "I spoke with the manager. I think he was the main key for me to join Tottenham and the project. The way he spoke with me, with my family, it was very special... it made the decision easy."
But they are now realising the hard work required to reach the standards of the Italian boss, and that playing within some styles of play require an elite level of fitness that simply does not come without a relentless training block.