Maddison has been vocal about the need for a deep dive into the club’s fitness records, saying: “Our situation with the injuries has been worse than any other club. 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 [Dejan] 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.”
Despite his pragmatic view on some incidents, Maddison is convinced that the sheer volume of absences derailed the season as Spurs fought to avoid relegation. “We’ve been a bit unlucky,” he added. “But like I said, the big names that we’ve missed, it does affect you and you can’t just deny that. Myself, Kulusevski and [Mohammed] 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.”