Ange Postecoglou has admitted that he hopes to have Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero both back in time for European action as Tottenham finally start to get injured players back.
Spurs have missed their two key centre-backs for large chunks of this season, both of them returning against Chelsea in December only to need further time off, Romero with a quad injury and Van de Ven with a further hamstring problem. The Dutchman came back briefly last month for 45 minutes against Elfsborg but Postecoglou explained on Friday the 23-year-old has since been working with external specialists to adapt his body mechanics to prevent further hamstring problems that have dogged him in recent years.
The Tottenham boss said both defenders have been training despite being absent and he explained how that can happen without them playing matches.
"Because it’s a different sort of intensity, and when I say training, they’re not training always with the team. They’re doing a lot of individual stuff which is more based around them getting back to the levels that they need," he said. "To just paint a clearer picture, we’ve hardly trained for two-and-a-half months. I keep saying that you blokes could have joined in our training and I mean that seriously.
"We’ve literally just been walking around going through tactical stuff. For them to join in that, it serves no purpose because they get nothing out of it physically. Our (fit) guys have just been recovering. It’s just now, in the last three days, and the hope is that we can drop, now we’re training properly, Micky and Romero over the next couple of weeks to be part of our team training totally. Call it modified, call it what you want, but a lot of work they’re doing now is individual training.
"What I’m saying is they’re not bed-ridden, they’re not in sitting just getting treatment, they’re out there running. They’re doing significant training but it’s just not with the team always."
So could both centre-backs be back in action ahead of the Europa League round of 16 first leg on March 6?
"Yeah, with a bit of, for want of a better word, momentum, in terms of them getting some good training work," said Postecoglou. "If it’s not then, it won’t be much after. We’ve got an international break so it won’t be much after that. I would include Dom [Solanke] in that as well. He’s in a similar sort of boat.
"Once the boys get the green light, they’re going to push pretty hard. It’s like Madders, he should have been out for another two weeks. Vicario we had scheduled for the middle of March. It just depends on the players, but I would certainly expect Micky and Cuti to be around the mark of that time."
It has been a rare week at Tottenham with no midweek fixture to have the need to wheel the same small group of fit players out for. Postecoglou gave those tired players a couple of days off and he admitted that it was a welcome break for him as well to unclutter his mind after so many matches in the past three months.
"Even just to have a couple of days after the Villa game has been good. You deal with the disappointment of it, but just to have a couple of days where I could clear my head a little bit," he said. "I really felt the grind of the games, the constant trying to figure out ways we could navigate every sort of challenge we had on almost a daily basis.
"Turning up to do press [conferences] three times, sometimes four times a week…you don’t feel it when you're in it, but afterwards you go ‘ok, I need a bit of a [break]…it’s good to get a bit of a break where you can clear your head and have some meaningful conversations with people about anything without something else being at the forefront of my mind. Physically, I didn’t do anything, I didn’t go away or do anything, but just had a couple of days."
So what does Postecoglou do in his spare time?
"I’m a big reader and I don’t mind binging a TV series or two," he said.
After plenty of pushing to reveal what he's been watching recently, the Australian relented and said: "Just whatever takes my fancy. I don’t want to throw one out there because then it will get sort of a million hits and I might set people on the wrong path.
"I’ve just binged Landman, it just came out, with Billy Bob Thornton. Very good. I can recommend that to a certain audience, it’s not for kids! But yeah, that helps me switch off and I usually watch them with my wife so we both enjoy that. Even she says that I was having conversations that I was actually invested in, rather than just my mouth moving up and down and other things being in my head."
It was put to the Spurs boss that the season perhaps starts now in a way with various players finally coming back from injury and the target of the Europa League and pushing up the Premier League and he smiled with a tinge of sadness.
"I wish it did. It doesn’t, we’re still in the same position and we’re still dealing with certain things but as I said after the Villa game there’s a chance for little bit of a reset, there’s a natural physical break which allows us to think from here onwards there’s an opportunity to maybe change the course of our season," said Postecoglou.
"But you can’t ignore what’s happened and we’re still carrying remnants of that, the disappointment of the league season, the disappointment of going out in the semi-final of the Carabao Cup, the disappointment of Sunday. You carry that with you. You can’t just extinguish that. Is it an opportunity? Yes for a little bit of a reset because it’s coincided with some significant inclusions. I think there’s an opportunity for that, yes.
He added: "We’ve got a clear course now of what’s left for us. We know league-wise our programme without too many disruptions anymore. Games were getting shifted about and if we were in the Carabao Cup final we would have played Fulham next week in midweek, now we know that’s not there. And in Europe, it’s a pretty set path. It does give us a chance to map out the rest of our season and also give the players some clearer objectives to how we would tackle it.
"We need to improve our league position. Where we are I don’t think is reflective of what we have and that’s my role, to get maximum out of the guys we have. We need to move up the table and see where that takes us. I still think it’s really tight. At some point, unless teams are really lucky, the kind of injuries we’ve had will catch up with others as well. Which gives us an opportunity if we can get on a run to move up the table.
"We can’t put the cue in the rack in terms of the league and say let’s peter out and finish where we finish. That’s not the mindset I want. We need to improve our league form and move up the table. We need to tackle the task of trying to win a European trophy."
The recent fixture-packed period might have felt vaguely familiar to Postecoglou for his 2020 season with Yokohama Marinos amid the pandemic caused the campaign to get crammed into four months with his defending J-League champions playing 40 to 50 games in that short spell.
"Yeah it was similar. We had a horrendous injury list and horrendous fixturing as well. It felt like we played a game every two days. Yeah, it was a very similar period. I guess the difference there was the noise around it wasn’t as nearly as loud as it is in the Premier League for all the reasons we know," he said.
"So, you had time to clearly think through your strategy and what you want to do without having to deal with too many outside influences. That is the major difference, but the nature of the beast when you’re a manager in the Premier League."
So what did the Australian learn from that frantic campaign in Japan?
"I try to maintain and I think the key for me during that period and even during this period is that I’ve got to make sure the players still have belief in what we’re doing. I don’t take that granted," he said. "I said that after the Villa game that I really felt the players were still really committed to what we’re doing and if they can be committed through a tough time where it is easy to step back and say this isn’t my fault.
"If you can keep the players united through that and the way you do that is by having good leaders and making sure the players are supported and protected the right way, you usually come out of it in a pretty good position. I think you can lose sight of that a little bit and concentrate on, ‘we’re not playing well, we’re not winning games or we’re not in a great league position,’ and you can try to navigate your way through the results, but the key is to protect your players, support your players and make sure they get through it because when we get through the other side, they are the ones that will drive it forward.
"Like I said I have such high respect and admiration for the players who have been through this for the last two-and-a-half months and that they've just cracked on with it. They haven't at any stage absolved themselves of responsibility or not taken on the challenge. Now with hopefully getting some help in and around them with some rest, recovery and training and also some players coming back, we'll get the benefits of that."
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