Tottenham Hotspur midfielder James Maddison has said the club need to look into their “astronomical” injury crisis.
Spurs avoided relegation on the final day of the season with a 1-0 victory over Everton. They finished 17th for the second season in a row and were only two points above West Ham United. Spurs lost 17 times and had three different head coaches during the season.
Spurs had to cope with a long injury list with Xavi Simons, Wilson Odobert and Maddison all suffering anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries. Dejan Kulusevski did not play a single minute after undergoing surgery on his kneecap a year ago, Mohammed Kudus missed the second half of the campaign with a hamstring injury and Dominic Solanke’s involvement was limited by ankle and muscle problems.
Maddison believes Spurs’ injury problems are a significant factor behind why they underperformed.
“Our situation with the injuries has been worse than any other club,” Maddison told reporters, including The Athletic, after beating Everton. “People try and say, ‘Oh, but we’ve got this and that’. But ours is astronomical and we need to look at why that is.
“Sometimes it can just be unlucky, sometimes it can be a coincidence, like me doing my ACL or Kulusevski getting a horrendous knock off (Marc) Guehi. That’s not the medical team, that’s not the pitch or all the theories that you see, sometimes that’s rubbish. We’ve been a bit unlucky. But like I said, the big names that we’ve missed, it does affect you and you can’t just deny that. If we had had myself, Kulusevski and Kudus, and (Rodrigo) Bentancur missed three months and whatnot.
“If you had had them for the whole season, we wouldn’t have been in this situation, I strongly believe. That’s just not me being naive, that’s just a fact. But it is the situation we find ourselves in, and I am just proud of the lads to dig deep today.”
Maddison suffered his injury in a pre-season friendly against Newcastle United in August. He missed nine months in total and returned as a substitute in their 1-1 draw with Leeds United at the beginning of May. The 29-year-old made three appearances in total.
Maddison said he felt “relieved” Spurs avoided relegation but “not real joy and happiness.” He added that the club “need to be responsible for holding ourselves to higher standards and demanding more from each other individually.”
“I’ve been involved in three games off the bench at the end so I am trying to give you the answers you are looking for without being fully in it,” he said. “But the reality is, we haven’t been good enough. That’s why we’re in the position we are in. Now, we have to really figure out over the summer why that was the case and go back to the team that won the Europa League, the team that before would have got Champions League and stuff like that which we were not far away from.”
Maddison was full of praise for Roberto De Zerbi who replaced Igor Tudor as head coach in March. Spurs went on to win 11 points out of a possible 21 under the Italian.
Maddison revealed the new head coach has been living at the training ground with his backroom staff.
“Without that appointment, disaster could have maybe struck, but it didn’t, and he takes a lot of credit for that because of the work he’s done behind the scenes and on the training pitch,” Maddison said. “I thought we were brilliant today in a big pressurized game. I thought the first half was brilliant. We played really well, the intensity was there and that’s what you want to see from a Tottenham team.”