Ange Postecoglou believes that Son Heung-min's game time this season for Tottenham is not sustainable and that Lucas Bergvall responded perfectly on Friday to his Europa League disappointment.
Son has played in all of Spurs' seven games so far this season, starting all but the Carabao Cup match at Coventry which he came on for the final half hour of. The 32-year-old South Korean star has continued to produce for Tottenham this season and has four goal involvements in five Premier League games - two goals and two assists - but he came off in Thursday night's Europa League win against Qarabag with a hamstring problem.
On that issue, Postecoglou explained that Son "felt fatigue in his hamstring and that’s the reason he went down but whether that’s an injury or just fatigue we’ll have to wait and see".
So with 549 club minutes to his name already this season, plus another 180 minutes across two South Korea matches this month, is this level of playing time sustainable for the Tottenham captain?
"No," said Postecoglou. "I would have wanted to ease his workload this early part of the season, but we lost Richy and we lost Dominic [Solanke], then we lost Wilson [Odobert]. Sometimes, it’s not the amount of injuries, but the kind of injuries you get. So he’s played more than I think than I certainly want him to and the idea of signing Dom and bringing in Wilson and extending Timo [Werner’s] loan was that we could manage his load because he's got international football as well.
"It's something that I'm mindful of but it's just the circumstances so far, and Sonny always wants to play, that’s his attitude, but we’ve got to be sensible about it. I don’t think it’s got so much to do with his age because I haven’t seen that affect him. It’s more I just don’t think that kind of workload in the modern game is sustainable. We’ve spoken a lot about fixture overload and part of that responsibility lies with us to try to protect our players and certainly with Sonny we’re going to have to be mindful of that."
The Australian is not about to discuss the situation with the Tottenham captain though and explain why he will occasionally leave him out going forward.
"No. I tend not to make decisions by consensus," he said. "I think when you've got a player like Sonny, I’ve had experience of working with guys like that before and they’re always going to want to play. Do I want to dull that competitiveness by having a reasoned discussion with him over a cup of tea and saying ‘Sonny, this is going to be great for you, great for me’?
"No, I’d rather I leave him out and he’s disappointed with me because I think that’s what you want in him, and sometimes it’s doing something for someone’s own good and that’s my decision, my responsibility and I’ve got to take that on board."
Postecoglou will certainly not be telling Son to lessen his international demands and the long trips to captain South Korea throughout the year.
"Oh no chance, because I understand how important it is for him. We can look in the cold harsh light that his club football will benefit if he doesn’t play for his country but one day he won’t be able to play for his country and the one thing I wouldn't want is for him to have regrets that he missed the opportunity to play as much as he could," he said.
"All these decisions are better left to the player because they know how they feel about their career. It doesn’t matter how long you play, the lifespan of a professional footballer is still fairly short compared to how long you live your life so the time you have you want to be as fulfilled as you possibly can.
"You want to create as much of a basket of memories as you can because one day you won’t have that opportunity. I would never be the one to say, ‘Look for selfish reasons, for us as a club it would be great if you didn’t play for you country’. I just wouldn’t do it."
Whenever Tottenham were without Harry Kane in the past, Son would often step up and take on the responsibility of being the main man for the club and Postecoglou wants the rest of the team to do the same when their captain is not in the starting line-up.
"There’s an opportunity there because that’s what you want to try to create and that’s why we’ve got this leadership group is to see who can step up in that kind of scenario," he said "It will happen from time to time. That was a positive from last night that when [Son] went off, Vic took the armband and almost seemed to relish that responsibility to grow and sometimes you don't see these things unless there’s an opportunity.
"So there’s definitely an opportunity there for us to show that we can still be the team we want to be, even though he may not be involved as much."
One Tottenham player who was not involved as much on Thursday night as he wanted to be was 18-year-old Lucas Bergvall. The Swedish midfielder was sacrificed after Radu Dragusin's seventh minute red card as Postecoglou needed to bring on another defender in Destiny Udogie.
Bergvall could be seen sat disappointed on the bench and hiding his face mostly under a big hooded jacket. The Spurs head coach was asked whether he put an arm around the teenager afterwards and told him his opportunities will come.
"No, but he’ll know that. We entrusted him with starting a really important game for us, so he knows how we feel about him," said Postecoglou. "It was a tactical decision. He was disappointed. I expect him to be disappointed, but he’s going to have plenty of moments like that in his career.
"It’s always about how you respond to those things, how you grow from those things. He was training this morning - and he was flying - so he’s all good."
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