Ange Postecoglou has revealed that Richarlison is moving a lot more freely in training since fixing the groin issue that had been bothering him.
Richarlison made his first start since his pelvic surgery last month against Newcastle United on Sunday, with Postecoglou choosing to move him back to the number nine role, with Son Heung-min starting from the left.
The decision raised a few eyebrows but it turned out to be a masterstroke as the Brazilian led the line impressively and netted a brace.
The 26-year-old’s 18-month spell at Tottenham so far has been extremely underwhelming, with the forward struggling for any continuity due to injuries and form.
Postecoglou pointed out that the striker has had to overcome quite a few challenges over the past year but insisted that he believes in the former Everton man’s qualities.
The Tottenham head coach told Football.London: “I hope there’s a lot more to come, hopefully, that’s the platform we’ve given him. Look, it’s always the challenges for footballers.
“He came here, he’d had a fantastic impact in the Premier League with Everton, he came here and whenever significant money is invested, the expectations rise, you are going to a club where you are competing for honours and all those sort of things are the challenges you have to overcome when you come to a big club.
“That coupled with the physical setbacks he’d had, with a striker there’s usually just one thing people measure you by which is goals and all those kind of factors, but that’s up to him now.
“Like I said, we’re trying to give him that platform now and he showed last week that he can be a real threat at this level both with and without the ball. He won’t be starved of opportunities here and it’s up to him to take those and take his football to the kind of level that we believe he can.”
Richarlison is impressing Postecoglou in training
Following Spurs’ 4-1 win over Newcastle, Richarlison admitted that the groin issue had been plaguing him from last season, confessing that it was so painful that he was hesitant to take shots during warm-up to matches (Daily Mail).
Postecoglou stated that he has seen a big difference in the Brazil international’s mobility in training over the last couple of weeks.
The 58-year-old added: “He looks a lot freer in training from when I first arrived. Everything was a bit of a struggle for him when I first got here.
“You could tell he wasn’t able to play or move as freely as he wanted to and he was kind of labouring through things. He was still having an effect on games but you could tell and it got progressively worse.
“Whereas since he’s come back, you see him at training and even before the game at the weekend, he feels more like himself in terms of what he can do physically. That’s a big thing for a footballer because for the most part footballers are always battling with something. There’s always a little niggle.
“But if it’s something that’s really debilitating that they don’t deal with straight away and have to carry on with, it has an impact on them physically but also mentally. They know that every game they go into, every training session, is going to be a struggle. Whereas you remove that from it and they can just play.
“I think you saw that at the weekend. Not just his goals, but his general work-rate. At least two of the goals came from him winning the ball back for us. He’s able to do that stuff and that gives him more confidence.”
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Hopefully, Richarlison can now kick on deliver the kind of displays we saw from him regularly at Everton. If the 26-year-old can go on a hot streak in front of goal over the coming months, that would be quite timely, given that Son could potentially miss more than a month of football due to the Asian Cup.