Player Watch Player Watch: James Maddison
- Thread starter THFCSPURS19
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kendoddsdadsdogsdead
Well-Known Member
- Aug 29, 2011
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Was going to come and say this. He’s still tidy on the ball. He’s a bit ineffectual but I think a lot of that has to do with what’s happening in front of him and how the team attack in general. Maybe the power of kulusveski might be more effective the rest of the season as the combination play around the box is non existent but if we sort the forward line out he’ll come good again.
muppetman
Well-Known Member
- Jul 29, 2011
- 9,241
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Hard to know if he is still carrying a knock, the movement in front of him isn't there or if it's this.
It's also difficult to compare him with Lo Celso as they are quite different players and it's usually a more open and aggressive game by the time he comes on. But, if it's based on performances and form I'd like to see us have Lo Celso as the starter for a few and then sub on Maddison and see what affect this has on both.
Kulu hasn’t got the passing at 10 though. A few times he has chsnces to thread the ball and can’t. Gio is ready made for it sadly but just doesn’t get the chances
kendoddsdadsdogsdead
Well-Known Member
- Aug 29, 2011
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Lo Celso should definitely have got more opportunities. Everything is so crowded in the final third I don’t think those threaded balls have been on very often personally, probably why Maddison is struggling to impact games currently.
Jimmypearce7
Well-Known Member
- Feb 23, 2005
- 1,477
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He has been poor for ages. On Sunday he just couldn't compete physically. I would play Lo Celso possibly but I would prefer to see Donnelly- he has done v well as a number 10 and we have a great under 21 team and have to give some of them a chance some time.
whenstevewentup
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- Sep 12, 2021
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I’d take a shot on target from him at this stage
Trix
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- Jul 29, 2004
- 19,790
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Clearly not because he's done it over a number of seasons in the Prem for Leicester. He's way off form that's for sure but he's been stop start since the infamous Chelsea game, coming back into a side that was also off form. Son, Kulu, Richy, Bissuma have all also been is an out of form quite dramatically this season so he's not alone. In fact only a few of our players have really shown consistency throughout the season.
Mr Pink
SC Supporter
- Aug 25, 2010
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I think Richarlison has been consistent when he was starting week in week out.
bubble07
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- Dec 27, 2004
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He's standard is somewhere in between whereas I hoped it was that standard he displayed in the first 10 games
sidford
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- Oct 20, 2003
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New athletic article on Maddison. No idea why the graph didn't copy in so had to screenshot it
The two north London derbies this season offer a neat encapsulation of the two halves of James Maddison’s first year at Tottenham Hotspur.
Back in September, Maddison was absolutely the man. It wasn’t just the two assists he provided to help secure a 2-2 draw, it was the swagger he played with and how he spoke and carried himself after the game. “I got told he did the dart celebration and he must have still been doing it when I turned him for the first goal,” Maddison said of his England team-mate Bukayo Saka. He added with a smile: “I’ll have a little word with him in there.”
As well as his sense of humour, Maddison showed his defiant side, adding in an interview with talkSPORT that: “I think winning late last week (against Sheffield United) and coming back twice (against Arsenal), when you hear fans and neutrals talk about Tottenham they often say, ‘Soft, weak, they’ll bottle it, Spursy’, all that rubbish. I think the last couple of weeks show that we might be going in a slightly different direction.”
He was in a great run of form at that point and his start to life at Spurs felt like a non-stop sugar rush. Three goals and five assists in his first 10 games, Tottenham top of the league. Life was good.
Sunday’s north London derby was an altogether different affair for Maddison. He didn’t play badly as such, almost setting up a first-half equaliser for Cristian Romero with an excellent free kick, but he was largely peripheral and came off after 64 minutes with Spurs trailing 3-0. In September, it would have been impossible to imagine Maddison being substituted in such circumstances, injury aside.
It was the ninth game in a row in which Maddison was taken off, with Spurs needing a goal in the majority of those. Having started the season so brightly, he’s without a goal or an assist in his last six games.
Could playing Chelsea on Thursday prove redemptive? It was in the reverse fixture in November when Maddison suffered the ankle injury that forced him out for almost three months and abruptly ended that early-season momentum. Before he had to go off just before time, Maddison helped create Dejan Kulusevski’s opener by dropping deep into his own half where you might expect to find a left-back and playing a beautifully swept pass infield. That kind of freedom and invention currently feels a long way off.
Why, then, has Maddison’s productivity dropped off since he returned from injury? And if we look at the numbers behind the headline figures, has the downturn been as stark as it seems?
Starting with those headline figures, Maddison registered three goals and five assists in his first 11 Premier League games prior to injury. He has one goal and two assists in the 12 since. He almost has as many bookings (two) as goal contributions in that time — and he was lucky to escape punishment for lashing out at Ryan Yates in the win over Nottingham Forest a few weeks ago. It’s been a frustrating period.
Looking at the numbers in a bit more depth in the graphic below, we can see his output has definitely gone down.
One of the most interesting metrics here is sequence involvements leading to shots, which is a passage of play that belongs to one team and is ended by a defensive action, a stoppage in play or a shot. Maddison’s figure has dropped from 9.0 per game (behind only Rodri in the Premier League in this period) to 6.6, the 28th best in the time since he returned from injury. Still a good number, but it illustrates that he is not as consistently involved as he was before when it felt like every Spurs attack went through him.
One area of encouragement is that his expected assists aren’t especially down (0.3 to 0.2), which suggests he’s still getting the ball into decent areas for his team-mates.
Everywhere else though, there has been a marked drop-off. What’s behind it?
The first thing to say is that this has been a bit of a recurring theme for Maddison in the past few years — starting seasons well and then tailing off. Last season in particular there are plenty of parallels with what’s happened this time around.
Back then, Maddison began the season brilliantly. He scored seven times and provided four assists in his first 13 Premier League games (at a rate of 0.9 non-penalty goal contributions per 90 minutes), before being struck down by a knee injury away at West Ham in November 2022. Maddison went to the World Cup with England carrying that injury and after missing four games because of it on his return, never hit the same heights. He scored three (one a penalty) and assisted five in his subsequent 17 games as Leicester were relegated (at a rate of 0.45 non-penalty goal contributions per 90 minutes). Still good but half what he was averaging in that outstanding first part of the campaign.
The previous season (2021-22), Maddison tailed off after an initial burst but then came back from injury to finish the season in style with four goals and three assists in his final four games. Spurs will be hoping Maddison ends up having a similar trajectory this season.
The previous two campaigns, though, conformed more to the pattern of great start followed by an injury-affected less effective finish. Both of these seasons also saw Leicester fall out of the top four having looked certain to qualify for the Champions League and perhaps the lesson there was that they were too reliant on Maddison. Maybe Spurs are, too. In the 2020-21 campaign, Maddison enjoyed a longer period of consistent form — eight goals and five assists in his first 23 Premier League games (at a rate of 0.72 non-penalty goal contributions per 90 minutes). At this point, though, he was struck down by a hip injury and, after returning from that, didn’t register a goal or an assist in his final eight games of the season. This contributed, along with other factors, to Maddison being benched for the FA Cup final win against Chelsea.
In 2019-20 when Leicester similarly fell away in the league, Maddison registered five goals and three assists in his first 15 games (at a rate of 0.54 non-penalty goal contributions per 90). That was followed by one goal and zero assists in his next 16 (0.07 non-penalty goal contributions per 90), before he missed the final six games of the campaign with a hip injury. By the end at Leicester, supporters came to expect a drop-off in the second half of the season.
Does this suggest a durability issue? Could Maddison still be struggling to reach full fitness after that lengthy layoff? There’s no suggestion that he is currently carrying an injury and Tottenham head coach Ange Postecoglou shot down the suggestion after Maddison had been taken off early against West Ham last month. “He’s not carrying a knock,” Postecoglou said. “If he was carrying a knock he wouldn’t be playing. He’s fine, yeah.”
Even if he’s not dealing with a specific injury, one theory is that Maddison is not helped physically by the volume of fouls he receives. Despite missing almost a third of the season through injury, only four players have been fouled more in the Premier League in 2023-24 than Maddison (64). And looking at players with a minimum of 1,000 minutes played this season, only Crystal Palace’s Michael Olise (3.2) and Jordan Ayew (3.33) have been fouled more per 90 minutes than Maddison, who is fouled on average 3.15 times a game. Maddison is clearly targeted by opposition teams, who feel that if you stop him, you choke Spurs’ creativity. Nottingham Forest went as far as tasking Yates with deliberately trying to provoke Maddison into a reaction — which duly came when he aimed a jab into the Forest midfielder’s chest. There’s also a theory that in recent weeks, by the time games do finally open up, a battered and bruised Maddison has already been substituted.
Generally, though, those close to the situation are mystified by Maddison’s downturn in form. One school of thought is that he is trying too hard to make things happen, conscious that he has not been as eye-catchingly effective as he was in the early part of the season. This might especially be the case with the Euros coming up and his place in the England squad being far from secure. It is worth remembering, though, that over the season as a whole, Maddison has contributed a commendable 11 goals and assists in 23 games, at a rate of 0.55 non-penalty goal contributions per 90 minutes.
It’s a tricky balance right now because Maddison is encouraged to try things in Postecoglou’s system, but some feel he might benefit from focusing on doing the simple things for the moment and trusting that it will lead to a general uptick in form. What’s clear is that Maddison is not playing with the “flow” that he enjoyed in his early months at Spurs. In his third game for the club, away at Bournemouth, Maddison scored and was man of the match in a game in which he seemed to glide around the pitch and play on instinct. It was all done within a structure, but Maddison played with an elan that he’s been lacking in the past few months.
On Sunday, meanwhile, it was hard not to draw a comparison between Maddison and his Arsenal counterpart Martin Odegaard. Three years ago, Arsenal pursued a deal for Odegaard over Maddison, who was also well-thought-of at the north London club. Both players are wonderfully creative, but Odegaard possesses a relentless physicality that the Spurs No 10 does not.
The season is far from over. Spurs have five games left to play and if they are to finish strongly, Maddison will surely play a big part. Perhaps that is part of the problem — that Tottenham seem to be as reliant on him as Leicester were. Some would disagree and advocate for one of Kulusevski, Rodrigo Bentancur or Giovani Lo Celso to start in his place to give him a rest. Maybe Postecoglou will agree, but on the 23 previous occasions Maddison has been available for a league game this season, he has started.
The expectation is that he’ll do so against Chelsea on Thursday night. Presenting Maddison with the chance to get back to his best in the fixture that saw his season cruelly knocked off course six months ago.
The two north London derbies this season offer a neat encapsulation of the two halves of James Maddison’s first year at Tottenham Hotspur.
Back in September, Maddison was absolutely the man. It wasn’t just the two assists he provided to help secure a 2-2 draw, it was the swagger he played with and how he spoke and carried himself after the game. “I got told he did the dart celebration and he must have still been doing it when I turned him for the first goal,” Maddison said of his England team-mate Bukayo Saka. He added with a smile: “I’ll have a little word with him in there.”
As well as his sense of humour, Maddison showed his defiant side, adding in an interview with talkSPORT that: “I think winning late last week (against Sheffield United) and coming back twice (against Arsenal), when you hear fans and neutrals talk about Tottenham they often say, ‘Soft, weak, they’ll bottle it, Spursy’, all that rubbish. I think the last couple of weeks show that we might be going in a slightly different direction.”
He was in a great run of form at that point and his start to life at Spurs felt like a non-stop sugar rush. Three goals and five assists in his first 10 games, Tottenham top of the league. Life was good.
Sunday’s north London derby was an altogether different affair for Maddison. He didn’t play badly as such, almost setting up a first-half equaliser for Cristian Romero with an excellent free kick, but he was largely peripheral and came off after 64 minutes with Spurs trailing 3-0. In September, it would have been impossible to imagine Maddison being substituted in such circumstances, injury aside.
It was the ninth game in a row in which Maddison was taken off, with Spurs needing a goal in the majority of those. Having started the season so brightly, he’s without a goal or an assist in his last six games.
Could playing Chelsea on Thursday prove redemptive? It was in the reverse fixture in November when Maddison suffered the ankle injury that forced him out for almost three months and abruptly ended that early-season momentum. Before he had to go off just before time, Maddison helped create Dejan Kulusevski’s opener by dropping deep into his own half where you might expect to find a left-back and playing a beautifully swept pass infield. That kind of freedom and invention currently feels a long way off.
Why, then, has Maddison’s productivity dropped off since he returned from injury? And if we look at the numbers behind the headline figures, has the downturn been as stark as it seems?
Starting with those headline figures, Maddison registered three goals and five assists in his first 11 Premier League games prior to injury. He has one goal and two assists in the 12 since. He almost has as many bookings (two) as goal contributions in that time — and he was lucky to escape punishment for lashing out at Ryan Yates in the win over Nottingham Forest a few weeks ago. It’s been a frustrating period.
Looking at the numbers in a bit more depth in the graphic below, we can see his output has definitely gone down.
One of the most interesting metrics here is sequence involvements leading to shots, which is a passage of play that belongs to one team and is ended by a defensive action, a stoppage in play or a shot. Maddison’s figure has dropped from 9.0 per game (behind only Rodri in the Premier League in this period) to 6.6, the 28th best in the time since he returned from injury. Still a good number, but it illustrates that he is not as consistently involved as he was before when it felt like every Spurs attack went through him.
One area of encouragement is that his expected assists aren’t especially down (0.3 to 0.2), which suggests he’s still getting the ball into decent areas for his team-mates.
Everywhere else though, there has been a marked drop-off. What’s behind it?
The first thing to say is that this has been a bit of a recurring theme for Maddison in the past few years — starting seasons well and then tailing off. Last season in particular there are plenty of parallels with what’s happened this time around.
Back then, Maddison began the season brilliantly. He scored seven times and provided four assists in his first 13 Premier League games (at a rate of 0.9 non-penalty goal contributions per 90 minutes), before being struck down by a knee injury away at West Ham in November 2022. Maddison went to the World Cup with England carrying that injury and after missing four games because of it on his return, never hit the same heights. He scored three (one a penalty) and assisted five in his subsequent 17 games as Leicester were relegated (at a rate of 0.45 non-penalty goal contributions per 90 minutes). Still good but half what he was averaging in that outstanding first part of the campaign.
The previous season (2021-22), Maddison tailed off after an initial burst but then came back from injury to finish the season in style with four goals and three assists in his final four games. Spurs will be hoping Maddison ends up having a similar trajectory this season.
The previous two campaigns, though, conformed more to the pattern of great start followed by an injury-affected less effective finish. Both of these seasons also saw Leicester fall out of the top four having looked certain to qualify for the Champions League and perhaps the lesson there was that they were too reliant on Maddison. Maybe Spurs are, too. In the 2020-21 campaign, Maddison enjoyed a longer period of consistent form — eight goals and five assists in his first 23 Premier League games (at a rate of 0.72 non-penalty goal contributions per 90 minutes). At this point, though, he was struck down by a hip injury and, after returning from that, didn’t register a goal or an assist in his final eight games of the season. This contributed, along with other factors, to Maddison being benched for the FA Cup final win against Chelsea.
In 2019-20 when Leicester similarly fell away in the league, Maddison registered five goals and three assists in his first 15 games (at a rate of 0.54 non-penalty goal contributions per 90). That was followed by one goal and zero assists in his next 16 (0.07 non-penalty goal contributions per 90), before he missed the final six games of the campaign with a hip injury. By the end at Leicester, supporters came to expect a drop-off in the second half of the season.
Does this suggest a durability issue? Could Maddison still be struggling to reach full fitness after that lengthy layoff? There’s no suggestion that he is currently carrying an injury and Tottenham head coach Ange Postecoglou shot down the suggestion after Maddison had been taken off early against West Ham last month. “He’s not carrying a knock,” Postecoglou said. “If he was carrying a knock he wouldn’t be playing. He’s fine, yeah.”
Even if he’s not dealing with a specific injury, one theory is that Maddison is not helped physically by the volume of fouls he receives. Despite missing almost a third of the season through injury, only four players have been fouled more in the Premier League in 2023-24 than Maddison (64). And looking at players with a minimum of 1,000 minutes played this season, only Crystal Palace’s Michael Olise (3.2) and Jordan Ayew (3.33) have been fouled more per 90 minutes than Maddison, who is fouled on average 3.15 times a game. Maddison is clearly targeted by opposition teams, who feel that if you stop him, you choke Spurs’ creativity. Nottingham Forest went as far as tasking Yates with deliberately trying to provoke Maddison into a reaction — which duly came when he aimed a jab into the Forest midfielder’s chest. There’s also a theory that in recent weeks, by the time games do finally open up, a battered and bruised Maddison has already been substituted.
Generally, though, those close to the situation are mystified by Maddison’s downturn in form. One school of thought is that he is trying too hard to make things happen, conscious that he has not been as eye-catchingly effective as he was in the early part of the season. This might especially be the case with the Euros coming up and his place in the England squad being far from secure. It is worth remembering, though, that over the season as a whole, Maddison has contributed a commendable 11 goals and assists in 23 games, at a rate of 0.55 non-penalty goal contributions per 90 minutes.
It’s a tricky balance right now because Maddison is encouraged to try things in Postecoglou’s system, but some feel he might benefit from focusing on doing the simple things for the moment and trusting that it will lead to a general uptick in form. What’s clear is that Maddison is not playing with the “flow” that he enjoyed in his early months at Spurs. In his third game for the club, away at Bournemouth, Maddison scored and was man of the match in a game in which he seemed to glide around the pitch and play on instinct. It was all done within a structure, but Maddison played with an elan that he’s been lacking in the past few months.
On Sunday, meanwhile, it was hard not to draw a comparison between Maddison and his Arsenal counterpart Martin Odegaard. Three years ago, Arsenal pursued a deal for Odegaard over Maddison, who was also well-thought-of at the north London club. Both players are wonderfully creative, but Odegaard possesses a relentless physicality that the Spurs No 10 does not.
The season is far from over. Spurs have five games left to play and if they are to finish strongly, Maddison will surely play a big part. Perhaps that is part of the problem — that Tottenham seem to be as reliant on him as Leicester were. Some would disagree and advocate for one of Kulusevski, Rodrigo Bentancur or Giovani Lo Celso to start in his place to give him a rest. Maybe Postecoglou will agree, but on the 23 previous occasions Maddison has been available for a league game this season, he has started.
The expectation is that he’ll do so against Chelsea on Thursday night. Presenting Maddison with the chance to get back to his best in the fixture that saw his season cruelly knocked off course six months ago.
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He doesn’t look as mobile, I don’t know if the ankle injury robbed him of his quick feet, but he isn’t do the quick changes of direction any more to beat men.
He’s also trying to over play, it’s fine looking for the Hollywood pass at times but he’s trying to do it everytime he gets the ball, he’s slowing the play and trying to make passes that aren’t on. The amount of times he should make the easier pass to someone in space.
He clearly wants to impress, but the guy needs to ride the bench and go again in pre season
He’s also trying to over play, it’s fine looking for the Hollywood pass at times but he’s trying to do it everytime he gets the ball, he’s slowing the play and trying to make passes that aren’t on. The amount of times he should make the easier pass to someone in space.
He clearly wants to impress, but the guy needs to ride the bench and go again in pre season
Now it's Spursonal
Well-Known Member
- Aug 4, 2012
- 1,700
- 14,082
Rightfully dropped tonight imo, but this is crazy considering his massive fall off post-injury.
Still an elite player in waiting for us next season when he recovers fitness/confidence.
yido_number1
He'll always be magic
- Jun 8, 2004
- 8,764
- 17,033
Elite players don't go this many games turning in the shit he has. He needs to find his swagger again quickly or we'll get to the summer and question his involvement as a key player.
SlotBadger
({})?
- Jul 24, 2013
- 14,141
- 44,239
Extremely disappointed in him in recent months. He used to score screamers for Leicester and today he could barely keep his shot inside Stamford Bridge.
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