The Tottenham sporting director based an entire transfer window reasoning on something that has not come to pass for the north London club
Mohammed Kudus' injury setback appears to be another damning indictment of Tottenham's January transfer window business and sporting director Johan Lange's defence of the lack of arrivals.
Spurs are now on their fourth head coach in nine months with the arrival of Roberto De Zerbi and the Italian will have walked through the Hotspur Way doors to find a club with nine players currently at different stages of injury rehabilitation. His predecessors Igor Tudor, Thomas Frank and Ange Postecoglou all faced double figure absences for prolonged periods during their tenures.
Postecoglou in particular bemoaned the amount of re-injuries during his time at the club during games and training, and despite changes at the top of the medical department and sports science staff that still appears to be happening with football.london reporting on Thursday that Kudus had suffered a setback in the quad injury that has kept the Ghanaian out since January.
Spurs had the chance to reinforce their squad in the January transfer window, despite the difficulties involved in that market, but only brought through the door a midfielder in Conor Gallagher and 19-year-old left-back Souza, while selling last season's top scorer Brennan Johnson just days before Kudus first suffered his serious quad injury.
Tottenham captain Cristian Romero hit out publicly at the tiny and tired first team squad the club were working with but Lange maintained after the window closed that not reinforcing the numbers would be offset by players returning from injury.
"Of course, when we go into January, we didn't anticipate that we'll have seven injuries during the month of January. So, that of course changes things during the course of the window," said the Dane in his club interview.
"It's very important, even though that is highly frustrating with all the injuries, to remain disciplined because, A, the players are coming back and, B, if you then, can you say, go in and make a stress purchase of any football players, then yes, the immediate feeling gives you is nice, but there's no point in signing players that have not helped us in the short term, in the medium term, or even in the long term.
"So, even though that is highly frustrating with all the injuries, the majority of the players will return this season here, hopefully a few very soon. It is important as a club to remain disciplined and make sure to do our best, our ability only to sign players that can generally help the team now or in the future."
He added: "Again, it's for a number of reasons. First, a lot of our injured players, they will return in this season here, hopefully a number of them quite shortly."
Unfortunately, of the long-term players out when Lange made those comments ahead of the trip to face Manchester United in early February, Kudus, James Maddison, Dejan Kulusevski, Rodrigo Bentancur and Ben Davies all remain side-lined two months later and were added to a week after by Wilson Odobert. The young Frenchman suffered an ACL injury while Yves Bissouma has been in and out of availability with muscle problems.
First choice goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario also put off having hernia surgery for months, playing through the pain before finally needing to have the operation last month.
De Zerbi will take charge of his first Tottenham match on Sunday afternoon at Sunderland. The 46-year-old will attempt to keep the club in the top flight over the coming seven matches with a squad that has rarely been fit for purpose at a club that declared last summer that it must compete in all competitions. Spurs will be fortunate if they are even able to compete in the Premier League next season.