Tottenham Hotspur broke their transfer record to bring in highly-rated Lyon midfielder Tanguy Ndombele in the summer market last year.
However, the Spurs faithful are yet to see the best from the marauding Frenchman this season as his campaign has been plagued with injuries and a lack of fitness.
Ndombele has played a total of 24 matches for his new club, scoring two goals and setting up another four across all competitions (TransferMarkt).
However, the midfield man has played 90 minutes just once under head coach Jose Mourinho, and only three times in his entire Spurs career.
In the last four Premier League matches, Ndombele featured twice for a total of 83 minutes and failed to come off the bench for the remaining two.
Mourinho announced at the start of this month that they had put Ndombele onto a new special fitness regime to combat his injury problems (Football London).
Alasdair Gold has now given the lowdown on what this involves, whether it is working, and whether Spurs fans will eventually see Ndombele at his best.
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He said (Football London): “I think we’ll start to see it with every passing week. Getting 60 minutes into his legs was a big deal. Yes, he looked knackered at times, but if he came through it without any injuries then it’s a step in the right direction.
“I asked Mourinho a couple of days ago why after six months of the season, following a full pre-season, he still couldn’t rely on Ndombele to play 90 minutes and he simply said it was all the niggling little injuries that had messed up his fitness.
“I followed that up with pretty much your question, had he seen benefits of putting the Frenchman on the ‘global training programme’ to improve his all-round fitness, diet and nutrition. His answer was simply that at least he hadn’t got injured since which I guess is progress.
“Ndombele is the only one who can fix his problems. He’s got all the talent in the world and he could be a devastating weapon in Mourinho’s armoury if he had the fitness to allow him to do what he does as a box to box player for 90 minutes.
“The Premier League is a very different proposition physically from Ligue 1 and we mustn’t forget that Ndombele was playing lower league French football only four seasons or so ago so his body is playing catch-up.
“Many foreign players need at least a season to adjust, Ndombele’s problem is that Spurs shelled out a club record £63million all in for him and will be expecting a return on that sum.”
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