Tottenham Talk on Sunday 29th Aug
Tottenham Talk on Sunday 29th Aug
Arsenal are the only team among the 92 league teams not to have scored a league goal this season so their goal of the month competition will have to come from one easy EFL Cup game.
Meanwhile, along the road, Tottenham's training facilities are second to none offering state-of-the-art performance analysis suites, a new hydrotherapy pool, an altitude chamber and an altitude room to aid top performances due to the low oxygen content in these rooms.
It increases your aerobic capacity, lactic acid tolerance, and oxygen flow to your muscles.
None of Tottenham’s last 11 home league games have been draws, we have won seven and lost four.
Watford are facing an early-season injury crisis in midfield and new signing Ozan Tufan won’t arrive until after the international break.
A revitalised Dele Alli scored his first Premier League goal in 17 months against Wolves, while his last four strikes for Spurs have come either inside the opening 15 minutes or after the 85th minute.
The last five goals Spurs have scored in competitive home games against Watford have all came in, or after, the 80th minute.
Pierluigi Gollini, Ryan Sessegnon, Harry Winks, Giovani Lo Celso and Bryan Gil all started on Thursday, but are set to drop to the bench.
Meanwhile, along the road, Tottenham's training facilities are second to none offering state-of-the-art performance analysis suites, a new hydrotherapy pool, an altitude chamber and an altitude room to aid top performances due to the low oxygen content in these rooms.
You hear of athletes in many sports doing altitude training where being able to perform in low oxygen allows enhanced performance when returning to normal altitude.
This is not something that developed in football yet and is something can could give an advantage to Spurs with increased fitness and endurance.
It increases your aerobic capacity, lactic acid tolerance, and oxygen flow to your muscles.
Further benefits of altitude training are creating more blood vessels for oxygen to flow through, improved heart functionality, enhanced muscle performance and a better overall health.
If you have more oxygen flowing through your body, then recovery times are minimised while strength and endurance are enhanced.
Now I could write a whole article on this but you get the jist already, but as this is new in football, you won't find an altitude chamber and an altitude room at other clubs, figuring out the best way to use it may take some time and research.
The research in this area is generally aimed at individual sports and not team sports so we are treading rather new ground.
In fact, there is almost a complete absence of research into the effects of altitude training in team sports.
so do we just use it to speed recovery or to enhance performance?
Scientists who have been studying this since 1970 tell us that an athlete can improve performance by between 1% and 3%, which may not sound a lot but has been the difference between winning and losing on numerous occasions.
In top level sport you look for every fraction of a percent to improve performance, the Kaisen principle again.
I don't know who is tasked with assessing the potential benefits and putting forward their findings but someone should be undertaking the task.
I talk about sports psychologists improving player mentality a lot. Someone at Tottenham should again be assessing this and putting their finding before the board.
How much would that work eradicate mistakes from individuals, would we also get between a 1% and 3% performance improvement?
You can see this adds up, 6% is a significant improvement.
How can we improve what we do must be the daily mantra of any coaching staff, medical team and off the field operations.
Think about it.
Anyway onto some football and a preview of the Tottenham Hotspur vs Watford game this afternoon.
This is our chance to go three from three before the international break to start the new season.
As Spurs have never lost a home Premier League game against Watford (W6, D1), we Spurs supporters will be hoping we will get to see the club open a league campaign with three straight wins for the first time since 2018/19.
They have also signed Moussa Sissoko from us and presumably the paperwork was completed and registered in time for him to be available for them today. Whether he features is another matter.
The ‘Hornets’ have struggled on the road though, losing seven straight PL away games, something they also did in the 2016/17, but of course this is a new campaign with a new team.
They were beaten by Brighton & Hove Albion after their opening-day win over Aston Villa, but did claim a morale-boosting midweek EFL Cup victory over Crystal Palace.
Avoiding relegation is the absolute minimum target for manager Xisco this term and after conceding in each of their last three away games in or before the tenth minute, they will be looking to make a much more solid start to the game.
Joe Rodon still isn't available but should be available after the international break for the Crystal Palace game.
Assuming he is here after the transfer window closes he is then likely to feature in the UEFA Europa Conference games and be an integral part of the defence along with Ben Davies and I suspect Dávinson Sánchez.
Red Country Internationals
Giovanni Lo Celso and Cristian Romero will travel to play in Argentina's World Cup qualifiers next month and will therefore have to isolate on their return for 10 days, missing at least one weekend of games, as shown in an earlier post.
This is their decision, against the clubs wishes, but their choice.
I don't know about you but I like the fact there is the chance to watch Spurs twice a week so I welcome the midweek UEFA Conference League games.
Were it not for these then we wouldn't know what quality we have in Bryan Gil and Cristian Romero, who is surely going to develop into further, even though he looks a top quality centre-back already.
Well that's it folks.
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5 comments
COYS!!
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Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing Manager
Tottenham Hotspur Football Club Tottenham, England, United Kingdom
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Small steps, I guess.