Ange Postecoglou: Is Tottenham manager's style causing Spurs injury crisis?

Tottenham Hotspur remains silent regarding the future of head coach Ange Postecoglou, which is not unusual for the club and chairman Daniel Levy. With the team plagued by injuries and Levy facing strong criticism from disgruntled fans, the club needs to make a significant decision in the winter transfer window about whether to support Postecoglou, which would be more convincing than any "vote of confidence."

Tottenham desperately needs to strengthen their squad. They are once again near the top of the Premier League "injury" list, with 11 players currently unavailable. Dominic Solanke, Timo Werner, and Brennan Johnson have also joined the ranks of already absent defenders. Postecoglou stated that there "will be an urgency" in the transfer market after Sunday's loss to Everton. He also added, "These players need help...the club is working hard."

But why are Tottenham experiencing so many injuries? Is it related to Postecoglou's style of play? And what is it like to work with him? BBC Radio 5 Live's "Monday Night Club" interviewed sports scientist Anton McElhone, who worked with Postecoglou at Celtic and previously at Tottenham under Mauricio Pochettino.

McElhone was the head of sports science at Celtic from 2021 to 2023, when Postecoglou was the manager. "Ange was very clear, 'This is how I do it at every club.' Players adapt within a few months. It’s a collaborative process. He wants us to implement a ‘football first’ philosophy – everything has to start and end with the ball," McElhone said. "Ange is very good at giving players time off to reflect. The training load is reasonable. Ange is known for his tactical style, and he’s a very strong leader in getting his ideas across. He’s done it at different clubs, without the same staff, which is incredible."

McElhone was a fitness coach at Tottenham from 2011 to 2017. "We know the Premier League is the most dynamic league in the world," he said. "It’s got 20 teams of equal level and physicality – it’s the best league in the world. Mauricio Pochettino brought a front-foot style of football to Spurs. But to achieve that style, it can take six to 12 months. The intensity is very high. For the players, it’s survival of the fittest. You need to be young, you need to be fit, you need a certain level of physicality, and a will to overcome. To do that in the Premier League, you have to do a lot of training. But you need the right tools, and by that I mean the right players. They need to be robust, and I don’t know if Spurs currently have those players. They’ve got a very young squad after the senior squad. What we saw from Ange last year, that was against the odds. That’s normally a peak you get in the second season. I think that’s the difficulty they’re having at Tottenham. They have a lot of non-contact injuries, which can be very difficult.”

Some Tottenham fans have criticized Postecoglou for not giving players rest, and he faced scrutiny when first-choice center-backs Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven returned early for the game against Chelsea on December 9th. Both players were substituted - and remain injured - with Romero being taken off after 20 minutes in the 4-3 defeat. "Ange just looks at the data, [he’ll say] ‘give me the facts’. Top coaches make decisions," McElhone said. "We don’t dictate, our job is to support, to provide information. In Ange’s first year at Celtic, Kyogo Furuhashi got injured before the Scottish Cup final: a grade two B hamstring injury. The manager asked ‘can we get the player to play? Is it a big risk?’ The player wanted to play, we took the risk, we took the right strategy to try and get the player to play, but that was the manager’s decision. Ange has his own mind, he’s an outstanding leader, very strong and understanding, and has a good sports science and education background from Australia."

Data from PremierInjuries.com shows that as of January 15th, Tottenham Hotspur ranked third in the number of separate injuries this season (21) and second in days lost to injury (655 days). Brighton is first with 23 injuries and 914 days lost. "Six months into Celtic, Postecoglou could rotate his top five players around the 65-minute mark to keep them fresh for a 60-game season," McElhone recalled. "At Tottenham, he’s probably finding that more difficult because I don’t think they’ve got the depth of squad that other Premier League clubs like Man City and Chelsea have. Looking at how Celtic developed under Postecoglou, we had a three-month period where we had injuries every week, mainly hamstring injuries. We had to wait for the winter break to reset.”

"As the players adapted to the demands of the system, the fluctuations in the game changed, instead of that constant ‘basketball’ up and down, the team was able to control the half more. This reduced the need for the center-backs to have to run back and defend as often. As the game model and philosophy became stable, the injuries decreased. At the moment, that’s the problem for Tottenham. He hasn’t got the squad depth. They’ve also changed their medical team in the last year, which has complicated things further.”

“The really interesting thing about Ange is that everyone who has worked with him realizes that he is a very strong head coach. I’m not criticizing him, but he has his own mind,” McElhone said. “He’s got that Alex Ferguson mentality: this is how I do things, this is how I work. He doesn’t have a fixed network of staff. He has achieved at every club he’s gone to. But equally, it’s never been plain sailing. Therefore, he’s always going to expect there to be really difficult periods. I think he has the resilience, understanding, and experience to get through those. He’s a very tough and persistent head coach; mentally very strong. Probably one of the best coaches I’ve worked with. He won’t worry about the outside noise. He will focus on how we win, how we play in our style and our way. He will just focus on that.”