James Maddison has discussed how challenging things were at Tottenham Hotspur over the last few months amidst the club’s injury crisis and has made a confident prediction about what can be expected from Spurs over the coming months.
The energy, application and sharpness we have seen from the Tottenham players in their last two wins against Man Utd and Ipswich have been in stark contrast to the tired performances we saw from the side over the last couple of months.
That is perhaps down to the week’s rest between matches and the easing of Tottenham’s injury situation, with several first-team players now back in action.
That lends credence to Ange Postecoglou‘s claim after Tottenham’s loss against Liverpool in the Carabao Cup semifinal that his Spurs players simply were too tired to press the opposition and play in the style that they are used to.
James Maddison opens up on Tottenham injuries
Maddison insists that it is no coincidence that Tottenham have now won three games in a row after getting a few players back from injury.
The Spurs vice-captain explained what the mood was like at Hotspur Way as the injury list piled up and revealed the helplessness that he and other senior players felt at not being able to help the side.
The attacking midfielder pointed to the luxury of being able to make big changes around the hour mark as a key reason why Tottenham were able to win comfortably over Ipswich on Sunday.
When asked about the club’s injury situation over recent months, Maddison told The Standard: “The physio room was busier than the changing room. It’s tough. You look at the names who were out as well, it wasn’t bit-part players, it was strong players from the XI, senior players. So it was difficult.
“We’ve got a lot of young players having to take on great responsibility. When you’re a senior player who’s out – and I only had a small injury but I’m talking for the likes of Cuti Romero, Micky van de Ven, even [Guglielmo] Vicario was out for three months. It’s tough for them seeing the young lads having to deal with it, without being able to help.
“That’s the worst thing about football when you’re injured. You’re helpless, you can’t help the team out there, you have to watch. It drives you insane.
It’s no coincidence… we’ve got some big key players back and some important talent back from injury, which always helps. It coincides with us winning three in a row, so we’ve got to kick on now and try and keep climbing the table again.
“It’s the difference. [Saturday’s game] was 2-1, it was a tight game, everyone could see that, and at 60 minutes, me and Wilson [Odobert] come on, it just changed the dynamic of the game a little bit. Whereas rewind six weeks, we didn’t have those options,
we would have been starting, and there would have been kids on the bench, and there wouldn’t have been any changes at 60.
“It’s not rocket science, it doesn’t have to be someone extremely intelligent to realise that that can really help, especially when a big team with the quality that we have to utilise that when teams like Ipswich, no disrespect, have less quality than us throughout the squad, that we can bring on players like myself, Wilson, if they’re not in the XI, and really change the swing of the game.”
Maddison makes a confident Spurs prediction
Now that the Lilywhites have been boosted by the return of key players, Maddison believes that they are capable of going on a winning run and having a strong end to the campaign.
The former Leicester man confidently asserted that Tottenham have a much higher ceiling than the sides around them in the Premier League table right now.
James Maddison added on Tottenham’s aims: “We’re one of the teams in the league that can go on a winning streak, we showed it at the start of last season. We have the squad and the players to be able to do that.
“I think there’ll be teams that are in and around the same position as us, mid-table-ish, that probably don’t feel like they can, but our ceiling is quite high, especially when we have our senior players back, so we’re capable of going on that run and bridging that gap, and that’s what we’re hungry to do.”
