SQUAD
De Zerbi calling Maddison a special player was not a throwaway line
Managers say kind things about players every week and most of it means nothing. This did not read like that. Asked about James Maddison, De Zerbi said he is a different player, a special player, and then immediately added the condition: he has to be fit, he has to be in the right physical condition, because the intensity of this league is incredible. Both halves of that answer matter.
Start with the honest half. He is not being described as ready. A manager who tells you a player has to be in the right physical condition before he can be used is telling you that player is not there yet, and I am not going to dress that up into something it is not. What I will not do is pretend that is bad news, because the alternative was worse and we have all watched it happen before at this club.
We know exactly how the other version goes
A creative player comes back three weeks early because the noise gets loud enough, plays sixty minutes at seventy per cent, looks a shadow of himself, gets written off by the same people who demanded he start, and then misses another two months. Every fan base has watched that film. Every fan base then blames the player. So when a manager stands in front of a camera and says the condition has to be right before the shirt goes on, that is not a manager being cagey. That is a manager refusing to burn an asset to buy himself a quieter week.
Fit in October is worth more than available in September. I have watched enough of this club to know the difference costs you a season.
What a fit Maddison actually adds
We have gone four league games without a goal. Tuesday night at Anfield the creative burden in the ten role sat with Conor Gallagher, and the consensus afterwards was that the invention was not there. That is the exact hole the manager has just told you he has a specialist for, once the body is right. So the club has a problem, the club owns the solution, and the solution is being handled carefully rather than spent early. If any other side in this division were doing that it would be called good management.
Saturday will be about who is available, and he may well not be part of it. That is fine. I would rather look at a table I hate in September with him coming than a table I still hate in March with him injured again.
Update, 24 September. He came on for the last twenty-five minutes against Villa and forced a save from a free-kick. He is also one of the players staying at Hotspur Way through the break, which is why I think these three weeks matter more than anything happening on a Nations League Thursday.