The long game
On getting fit, navigating the schedule, and beating Spurs
At 15, Marco van Basten saw his idol, Johan Cruyff, in the flesh, leaving the stadium. He wanted to tell him that they would play together one day, but his courage failed him.
Fate intervened anyway. Van Basten would soon sign for Ajax, and by 17, he was making his senior debut, replacing his hero at half-time.1
Van Basten scored that day, and before long, he was scoring every kind of goal the sport allows, blasting overhead kicks, volleys, chips, oddly powerful headers, and detailed hits off both feet, playing like a ballet dancer who moonlights as a sniper or the other way around. He led the Eredivisie in scoring for four straight seasons, the final two with Cruyff as his manager.
But it was still the first act of the film, and a ticking bomb had been slipped under the table: his ankle. In 1986, Van Basten suffered his first injury, which would linger over everything that followed.
“Johan had a discussion with the doctor who said: ‘He has a problem but it’s not going to be worse. He can play.’ I had a feeling this is not good. I’m in so much pain. Johan said: ‘Listen, we make a deal. You don’t play all the competitions and some training you can skip. But you have to play in Europe. No matter what happens, you have to play the final.’ That was the deal we made.”
After a European Cup Winners’ Cup in which Van Basten scored the famous volleyed clincher and Bergkamp featured as a substitute, Berlusconi and Milan came calling. Van Basten’s first year in Italy included ample time in treatment rooms for his ankle, and he was in pain throughout.
Once he found rhythm, the performances were nothing short of legendary: three Ballons d’Or, a FIFA World Player of the Year award, and a 58-match unbeaten run that turned Milan into myth. Tony Adams said Van Basten was the hardest opponent he ever faced, surrendering a hat-trick to him at Euro ‘88; Maradona said the best player he ever saw was “between Romário and Van Basten.” Everyone who played with or against him speaks in hushed tones, bewitched by a player seemingly without weaknesses, fast and tall and agile and technical and deadly.
By 1994, though, the pain was all-consuming. Not long after reaching every peak imaginable, still at his prime age, he described crawling from bed to the bathroom in the morning, counting seconds to distract himself.
“Whispering, I never reach the toilet before I get to 120. The door sills are the most challenging part because my ankle has to go over them without touching them. Even the slightest touch makes me bite my lip to prevent a scream.”
The bomb had exploded. After flying around the world chasing specialists, after rushed returns, after questionable surgeries and injections and swelling and hope, the ankle simply quit. His final match came at 28, starting a Champions League final against Marseille, but unable to finish. He officially retired in 1995.
There wasn’t one reason for this. Misfortune doesn’t always produce easy culprits: sometimes shit happens and gets worse. Sometimes genetics does its thing. But sports medicine wasn’t what it is today; surgeries were ill-advised or outright botched, and Van Basten, in his book and elsewhere, certainly lays blame at the feet of certain doctors. Still, defenders could foul however they liked, and often did so with specific parts of the body in mind; coaches had every incentive to play their stars through warning lights, as they do today; and Van Basten himself was competitive and physical enough to test his luck. It was a perfect storm in slow motion.
Every professional athlete plays through pain. But there’s a thin line between toughness and malpractice. Football, with all its associated pressures, has been negotiating that line since it was invented. If you want to understand today’s game, with today’s demands, you must acknowledge the line, or else be humbled by it.
How do you make sure your most impactful players are also the most available?
It may be the most important question of all.
🧮 The Injury Equation
Arsenal’s injury problem doesn’t have a single cause. It’s a confusing collision of forces that have been building for years across the Premier League and football writ large.
The simple version is that Arsenal are hurt because everyone is hurt. To support my brilliant point, here is FotMob’s injury report for the North London Derby.2
The fuller picture helps elaborate on this. The league is running hotter than at any point in its history, and the wider football ecosystem has pushed players, who are seemingly younger every year, toward thresholds that bodies were never designed to sustain. Arsenal’s own game model and identity demands repeated maximal efforts. But we are but one team.
We can start with the league-wide trend that physical output in the Premier League has surged. Via SCOUTED, SkillCorner’s year-on-year tracking shows the 99th-percentile sprint velocities steadily rising.
High-intensity actions above 20 km/h have climbed sharply too, up from the mid-50s per 90 to the mid-60s, with a clear upward slope season after season.
Strikers now average more sprints per match (+15% since 2019), more high-intensity distance per minute (+10%), and far longer sprint distances than even a few seasons ago.
It is a structural change in how the sport is played. Everyone is running more, everyone is running faster, and everyone is running at higher thresholds.
Tom Allen, Arsenal’s own head of sports science, captured this shift in his previously published research: between 2014/2015 and 2018/2019, high-intensity running volumes in the Premier League rose, with significant increases for total distances (aside from GK).
Mikel Arteta has also offered his explanations. Injuries always need context and have a healthy (unhealthy?) dose of randomness to them.
“Sometimes I’ve been with a player where I’ve wanted to put the finger on something very clear. And then I’ve realised three months later that he had a problem with his wife, where he and his kid didn’t sleep for three days and then he got injured, and I said, ‘I’ve been scratching my head for one month trying to do that [figure out what was wrong], and then I find out this was the real reason.”
Interestingly, he pinpointed specific actions.
“We had three very similar actions with three injuries, two groins and one hamstring. There is a push when people are trying to accelerate. So to replicate that in training, especially when you play every three days, is very, very difficult.
“But there is a programme to try to reproduce things like that, even if they are not at the highest level like in football matches.”
The most telling part was a quote about GabiXL.
“When Gabi Magalhaes gets injured, a lot of people said he’s come [back] from Brazil [after the Interlull] and does that … When he injured his hamstring, he had to track 50 metres back, the one he was chasing was Adama Traore.
“If, instead of Adama Traore, that was Emile [Smith Rowe], with all respect, probably he doesn’t pull his hamstring.
“The last time he went to 33 to 34 kilometres an hour was six weeks ago. So, he didn’t have any exposure there. Can I train that there [on the training ground]? I think I can’t. But the game can take you to these circumstances.”
Football is a stack of high-intensity actions layered onto stressors you never see: tight travel, adrenaline, minor knocks, familial responsibilities, and schedule compression. The bodies of elite athletes carry their own complexities. Taking care of them is more complicated than resting them as much as possible, as they’re a bit like an F1 car that can overheat if stopped for too long.
The Howden European Injury Index shows injuries have climbed from 3,000 in 2020-21 to over 4,100 in 23/24, with total costs rising to €732m.
The Premier League remains the most expensive injury environment, responsible for 44% of total injury cost in 23/24. English clubs averaged an injury every 94 minutes and paid €3,698 per minute of football for injured players, the highest rate of any league. Arsenal sat in the middle.
Then you can layer the league’s stylistic demands on top of that. On top of all the intensity data we have, there’s another thing that I think goes under-covered. Crosses and aerial duels are almost always a) random and b) violent. To better understand that question, I pulled the numbers of some actions that require clatterin’ and runnin’.
Premier League matches feature more launches, aerial duels, crosses, through-balls, and defensive interventions, all while awarding the fewest cards and fouls.
These are physical actions. It is no surprise that Mikel Merino injured himself in his first training session while battling in the air with Gabriel. These battles produce awkward landings, knee torques, shoulder impacts, and second-ball collisions. Then, they turn into sprints.
Zoom out, and it mirrors what Steve Kerr recently described in the NBA, another league awash in more pace, more distance covered, more full-speed actions, less recovery, and schedules that leave no space for adaptation.
“[The Warriors’ medical staff] believes that the wear and tear, the speed, the pace, the mileage is factoring into these injuries. Across the league, everyone understands that it’s easier to score if you beat the opponent down the floor, get out in transition. But when everybody’s doing that, the games are much higher-paced. Everyone has to cover out to 25 feet because everybody can shoot 3s. We have all the data. Players are running faster and further [than] before. We’re trying to do the best we can, but we basically have a game every other night. It’s not an easy thing to do.”
He expanded:
“We literally haven’t had a single practice on this road trip. Not one. We’ve been gone a week or longer. Eight days, not one practice. It’s just game, game, game. So not only is there no recovery time, there’s no practice time.”
His comments mirror almost exactly what Frenkie de Jong said:
“The big problem is that you never have time to train during a season. You’re just recovering,” De Jong continues. “Most top clubs have to develop their football during pre-season and then try to make progress by playing matches and watching video. Players get more tired, which in turn leads to a decline in quality. Is that healthy?”
Some injuries come from high-speed stuff, some from jumps and landings, some from randomness. Some of the injuries are from sheer accumulation; you can’t neatly separate seasons, and I believe Spurs are still paying the price for Ange’s play-style. I’ve even wondered whether the extra substitutes have an unexpected knock-on effect: the league always has fresh attackers to throw on, but defenders rarely rotate at the same rate.
It should also always be noted that fitness levels and injury specifics are where our information asymmetry is at its highest. The club is always working with vastly, and I mean vastly, more information than we have.
But none of this absolves Arsenal of responsibility or introspection. To my eyes, previously pushing the likes of Kai Havertz and Ben White beyond their limits can’t be chalked up as bad luck when the predictable happens. And it’s hardly surprising when players like Riccardo Calafiori and Noni Madueke pick up knocks while adjusting to more physical leagues or situations, carrying their own injury histories. But the broader trend is undeniable.
Some things can be done with play-style. One of the least taxing things you can do is pass it around. For one, I think we should keep it on the ground a bit more, circulate in the middle third even more, and allow at least one forward to be lazier about tracking back in full-sprint situations. Arteta already turns things down in second halves, as he did against Burnley.
The bear case is just that injuries turn into more injuries, and Arsenal’s ask is ultimately unrealistic, too demanding. The more hopeful case is that this is where squad depth becomes a form of game management. A deeper group lets you treat small knocks like small knocks, where players can actually rest instead of being pushed past their limit. It lets you rotate by design instead of desperation, take a player out of the red zone, and be conservative in September so you can be full throttle in March, as we did post-Dubai, and as City have always done. It can be argued that Arsenal have the best depth in the world, at least on paper.
In a league this demanding, sometimes the biggest advantage isn’t who runs the fastest, but who can still run at all.
🖕Scouting Spurs
I’ve always been a fan of Thomas Frank, I’ll admit. I think a manager’s first job is big picture (cohesion, culture, and identity); then the tiny picture (stacking tactical details that create marginal gains). The rest sits with the players.
The detail side with Frank has always been obvious. When Arsenal rolled out something new (like, I don’t know, using White to block the keeper), the likes of Porto and Brentford would immediately have a counter-action, while managers like Ange stuck to their ideas. Frank has always had an eye for detail.
In isolation, Spurs have also signed a lot of players I like.
But I don’t like how it all fits together yet, and I haven’t enjoyed watching their games back (at all). I knew about the home/away splits, but didn’t fully understand all the jeering given their league position (5th!) and the injury list, but now I kind of get it. It hasn’t been wretched, but it has been quite unimaginative.
It was a pretty ambitious summer for them.
They have been fairly (?) compact and well-drilled defensively, though there have been rough patches and times when their press feels overambitious. The core issues have been:
a) the injuries
b) how the new signings fit together
c) the midfield
They’ve lost much of their creativity to injury. They have signed a lot of similarish, associative players in attack, and associative players take time to adjust. They’ve also played a sturdy but uninventive midfield pivot, which is an issue that affects everything. They are often bypassed entirely.
Frank seems intent on proving a novel idea: the first step to being good at football is not being bad at football. He looks determined not to be bad. For now, it’s coming at the cost of any real dynamism, aside from individual moments.
In terms of playstyle, I’d agree with this, from Machine Football:
According to our model, Tottenham employ the style of a Passive Controller – a system centred around conservative ball retention and maintaining a compact shape.
While this approach brings an element of control and stability, it restricts attacking dynamism, especially against teams that sit deep and absorb pressure, as most visiting sides tend to do in North London.
He’s largely opted for a 4-2-3-1 so far, and he has adjusted to a 3-back in spur-ts, and rolled it out against PSG. Despite the back-3 (5) not being used very much this year, I have a sneaking curiosity about whether we could see it on Sunday.
They are a possession-heavy side this season, keeping the ball well (53.7%) but not turning that control into consistent chances. Many of the numbers have been wildly hot, including their finishing. They have the best conversion rate in the league and the highest overperformance against xG.
Defensively, the numbers also tell a different story than the raw goals against. They’ve conceded only 10 times, though their xGA is higher (15.2). Their overall xGD is one of the worst in the league, and the home/away split is chaotic: somehow 4-1-0 away from home with a negative expected goal differential. It’s a team that looks stable in the table, but solidly mid-to-low table underneath.
Frank also shared his three objectives against City, which may be similar here:
The three key themes he wanted to build his principles around against City were the “defensive side of the game, being brave in phase one (build-up) and two (ball progression), and set pieces.”
Because the physical Spurs midfield, mixed with well-drilled blocking from Frank, is the kind that has stymied Arsenal in the past, this isn’t a game that should be taken for granted.
Here were a few ways to attack that I saw come up in footage.
1. Press the shit out of them
Right after talking about the risks of intensity, he says “press the shit out of them.” Classic tactico nonsense.
The gameplans against Bayern and Chelsea can be modulated more, but I think if Spurs are intent on building out, then we should take this opportunity. Chelsea showed the way, as Ahmed Walid outlined; this was one of the matches I rewatched, and it was a 1-0 bloodbath (xG: 3.68 to 0.10). Without a top-tier midfield passing duo to control central progression or a dominant aerial striker to bring down the ball, their play leans toward carries, wide combinations, and low, hard deliveries into the box. They’re disciplined in how they work the ball and often arrive in good areas, but they rank low in total shots and rely heavily on overperformance rather than volume. They only have four through-balls this season.
Frank wants to have a varied set of options in build-up, but he has limitations with personnel. Their build-up patterns are fairly secure, though they are jumpable, and there are points you can target. Spurs make middle-third mistakes partly because they commit numbers to help progression, and the timing has been off with Simons; teams have had success shaping their press to control the pivots. They lead the league in errors leading to shots.
All this tells me to go full-aggression, man-to-man in the press, even with Gabriel out. The plan from there is straightforward: lay off Romero, block Palhinha and Bentancur with cover shadows, angle the press so the fullback becomes the “visible” outlet, and then spring a mega-aggressive coordinated trap once the pass is played wide. It has to be aggressive and immediate.
Here’s what that looks like with the clip overlaid.
For this reason, I would actually consider starting Hincapié at left-back. He is likely to give Kudus the longest day at right-wing, and those jumps are going to be hugely important in all phases. I’d personally go Calafiori LCB (if healthy) and Hincapié LB, but I’d expect to see Mosquera at LCB, Saliba at RCB, and the healthiest option at LB.
These are the timings that Spurs have struggled with. Going man-to-man allows you to jump these with full force.
Spurs carry the ball well, arrive in good crossing positions, and punish teams who switch off (watch Brennan Johnson at the back post), but it can be fairly predictable. Our wingers will have to track the full-backs, and will have a lot of running to do.
2. Fast, grounded switches (followed by underlaps?)
Spurs can defend with commitment and stay compact once the ball progresses to the defensive-to-middle thirds, which makes it tough to break them down by going straight through the middle.
They swarm the middle, and they rack up tackles and recoveries because of how aggressively they collapse around possession. In all, they log 20.6 tackles per 90, with a league-high 9.36 in the middle third.
It’s going to be tough to get through central areas, but that also creates a predictable pattern. Basically, they can over-lean. Grounded, driven switches (instead of slower, floated ones) are the best way to punish that.
The key is what comes after the switch. Because Spurs stay so narrow, the weak-side fullback often ends up isolated.
These timed overloads, especially a winger receiving on the touchline and a midfielder (or full-back) arriving inside at pace, create the kind of threat their block struggles with. They concede the third-most key passes in the league. They haven’t won a match this season when the opponent has completed more than 200 medium-length passes, which might be a sign that long possessions cause them problems.
TL;DR: move them to one side, switch fast on the ground, arrive with numbers. Their compactness helps them survive the first action. It’s the second and third arrivals that break their line.
3. Let it rip
The underlying picture makes them more vulnerable to shots than the table suggests.
They block fewer shots than any team in the league, and opponents have missed nearly 77% of their clear chances according to Gradient, which is probably an unsustainably high rate for any side.
The footage confirms that Spurs’ last-line reactions and body shapes don’t consistently disrupt shots once the ball reaches the box. I’m looking at you, Ebere. Take some shots, shoot through bodies, they might turn.
The other benefit is what every youth coach knows: a missed shot is an opponent goal-kick, and another opportunity to press.
4. Half-space crosses
Spurs are aggressive about doubling wide wingers, so Saka or Trossard will almost certainly face tight pressure. Because their midfield often collapses centrally or drops into the back line to protect space, those doubles can create a natural release point in the half-space.
That’s where Rice, Zubimendi, Calafiori, Eze, or maybe Hincapié can step in uncontested and deliver whipped crosses. Spurs struggle in the air (44.7% success), Vicario stops almost none of the crosses he faces (only 3.7%, 19th in the league), and their back-post tracking can be loose, especially on Brennan Johnson’s side.
Send three to the back post, like this Mbeumo goal.
Johnson also lost De Ligt in added time.
This could be a good matchup for Merino.
🙅🏻♀️ Watchouts
Some things I’m nervous about:
Late challenges / offside trap discipline: Avoid late contacts and janky lines. Arrive right when the ball does, or they can pass through. I’d sag off Romero and let him have time, limiting his options. He wants pressure. I’d go all-out on the others.
Johnson at the back post: Timber and Saka must stay connected on Johnson’s side. One of the best narrow skills in the game.
Kudus on the half-turn: Don’t let Kudus receive between the lines facing forward. Jump him, foul him as needed, or he’ll start a transition. He’s been their primary source of dynamism.
Simons with time: Simons has had trouble receiving with time and being on the same page with his teammates. Blow up his spot right away. This likely means a CB following him into midfield, and being comfortable with 1v1s at the back.
Set-piece targeting, sans Gabriel and Havertz: They generate a lot of corners (6.09/90), with 31.6% of their goals and 36.4% of their xG from set pieces, and 50% of deliveries aimed at the central zone. Stack the middle.
Low losses: They forced City into some silly stuff. Let’s, uh, not do that.
🔥 Final thoughts
In a footballing world where health and fitness sit over everything like a fog, maybe the smartest thing you can do is be a little boring in September so you can be terrifying in April.
Reinforcements are coming. Ødegaard is the one I’m most desperate to see again, stitching everything together and bringing balance throughout. But then there’s Madueke, Havertz, Jesus … I take that back. My answer is “everyone.” I want them all back. And because they’re coming back, we can afford to be pragmatic, lean on the depth, and accept the tradeoffs. Gabriel’s absence might cost us in set pieces, in box domination, and in bullying top forwards, though it may also open up new build-up patterns with Calafiori, Mosquera, and Hincapié, and give us a chance to grow some of our open-play threat. It’s hard to overstate the value of keeping players out of the Van Basten zone: managing this period well both strengthens the title charge and extends careers. We’ve been anything but healthy so far, and managed the results.
Spurs will be a test. Like Sunderland, they have some of the qualities that trip us up, and Frank will be prepared. I’m curious what we do with the back four/back five question, who’s actually fit, and how creative we can be with the pieces available. At the same time, Spurs are underwhelming in many ways and should be handled by a frontrunner who plays like one.
If there’s a thread running through the season so far, it’s to navigate the fog, trust the depth, and take care of the players. Then, when the moment comes, maybe hit a volley or two.
“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
I just learned that I can do footnotes, which is big news for me. In this one: because football loves its echoes, I must also mention that Mikel Arteta’s only Barcelona cameo came as a 16-year-old in a friendly, stepping on for … Pep Guardiola.
I always half-expect Gunnersaurus to show up on here.
>I’m looking at you, Ebere. Take some shots, shoot through bodies, they might turn.
This is prophetic to say the least
Excellent piece. What a player. I was thinking of the role and impact of referees. The fact that repeated fouls targeting a player (back of the legs, ankle etc) without protection (Saka an obvious example). Also, the ridiculous ignoring of elbows and arms to the head. Even in rugby, they have got serious about this (including official HIA’s); if you make impact with someone's head, you’re accountable. A lot of change required to protect the talent.