‘Self inflicted’ – Postecoglou on Tottenham’s lack of European football 

Ange Postecoglou has surprisingly said that he would rather have a crowded schedule than play just one game a week as Tottenham currently have at their disposal.

For the first time in well over a decade, Tottenham are not in any European competition this season having finished in a disappointing eighth place in the Premier League table at the end of the last campaign. 

That allied with the club’s early elimination from the Carabao Cup and FA Cup has meant that Ange Postecoglou‘s side have only had one game a week for the majority of the campaign and have not played for a fortnight ahead of this afternoon’s match against Crystal Palace.

While some might see that as a blessing, the Australian insisted that he has found that the team finds it easier to maintain rhythm when matches come thick and fast.

Postecoglou would prefer consistent fixture schedule

When asked if he wants more games rather than fewer matches as some managers call for, Postecoglou told Football.London: “Definitely, yeah, because I think, for us, a club like us who want to compete at the highest level against the best, you need a strong squad and to have a strong squad you need consistent games and consistent game time and opportunities.

“At the moment, if we get an injury then we’re liable to throw somebody in who hasn’t played for four or five weeks. It’s not easy on that player, whereas if you’ve got games, there’s a natural rotation that you need to make all the time and also gives you a little bit of rhythm. I had the other extreme last year of 60-plus games at Celtic, but I found that a lot easier to manage than having less games or having a disrupted season like we’ve had this year.”

Some pundits have suggested that Tottenham have an advantage over Aston Villa in the race for fourth place since the Lilywhites do not have any European competitions to worry about (BBC Sport).

When Postecoglou was asked about the same, he responded: “I don’t know. I don’t think there’s advantage or disadvantage, it depends how you use that time. If you ask me would I rather be in Europe? Absolutely, 1000 per cent I’d rather be in Europe at this time playing games.

“Some of our disruption is self-inflicted. If we had better runs in the cups and if we were in Europe. So some of it is in our control but when you look at this year I just haven’t felt, and maybe it’s the contrast to where I came from because at Celtic we had games every three days, there was rhythm and momentum but since then we haven’t been able to get the same flow and rhythm into our schedule. Some of that’s our own doing so got to accept that. One way to remedy that is to get more games for ourselves next year.”

Injuries have impacted Tottenham’s season

Tottenham have been one of the worst injury-hit sides across the Premier League over the course of the season and Postecoglou suggested that the stop-start nature of the campaign is one of the reasons for it.

When asked if the long breaks have made Spurs’ injury situations worse, the 58-year-old responded: “A little bit. It’s something you look at from an overall perspective. There’s no doubt that also the change in the training regime has an impact as well. It’s not the first time I’ve experienced it. It’s happened before to me when I’ve come into clubs that the first year there’s always a little bit of an uptick in injuries.

“We’ve had unusual ones this year. We lost Perisic and Solomon with knee injuries in training at the beginning of the year, which was a bit random. You’d like to think that’s not always going to happen, but a lot of the injuries are just the way we train and the way we play and players, sports science staff, medical team understanding that and making adjustments.

“Some of it could be the schedule, that we just haven’t had a clear run at it. so I think all those things you review along the way. More importantly when you get to the end of the year, it’s important you keep an open mind and you look at every area. I don’t think you should be dismissive of it and think it’s just a one off, it’s never going to happen again.

“You have to look into it and see if we can do things better next year so that if the schedule is a bit better and we do have European football, that adds a different challenge and hopefully we’re better prepared for it.

“Some of it is just the players getting used to it themselves, physically mentally, training at those levels and performing at those levels. I certainly just in my experience see that their bodies adjust and they become more resilient to it, but there’s also a science to it that helps us along in that way, but I think that is a contributing factor to why we’ve had the disruptions we’ve had.”

Spurs Web Opinion

Another problem with having so few games is that Postecoglou has not been able to hand the squad players as much game time as he would need to. That is certainly not helpful for the Australian, given that he is trying to build a strong squad with two quality options for each position.

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