De Zerbi Defends Medical Team Amid Tottenham Injury Concerns

Roberto De Zerbi will walk into Stamford Bridge on Saturday with a patched‑up Tottenham squad and a clear message: don’t point the finger at the doctors.

Spurs are chasing only their second win in 42 visits in all competitions to Chelsea’s home, yet the head coach batted away any suggestion that the club’s revamped performance and medical department is behind the growing list of absentees.

He does not see a crisis. He sees football.

De Zerbi backs his staff as absences pile up

There is some good news. Pedro Porro is back. The defender has returned from injury, and De Zerbi also reported that Andy Robertson, Omar Marmoush and Dominic Solanke were “good” after recent fitness concerns.

The rest of the bulletin is far less encouraging.

• Destiny Udogie remains out.
• Tosin Adarabioyo is a doubt.
• James Maddison did not train for three days after the win over Coventry on Monday and may not make it.
• Dejan Kulusevski, who only just returned to action with his first minutes since May 2025 against Frank Lampard’s side, will be handled with extreme care.

Factor in the long‑term injuries – including Lucas Bergvall and Savio – and De Zerbi could be missing nine players. Rodrigo Bentancur is unavailable through suspension. It is a significant chunk of his squad stripped away on the eve of a notoriously awkward away day.

Yet the Italian is adamant the spotlight should not swing onto the staff behind the scenes. Spurs hired a new performance director, Dan Lewindon, last season and reshaped the department in July. De Zerbi made it clear he will not join any rush to judgement.

The club, he said, will produce a “total report” on injuries at the end of the season. Until then, he is standing firm behind his team of specialists. In his eyes, they are “high level”, worthy of his “big confidence”, and the current situation is simply part of the sport.

Porro, Bergvall, Robertson: coach lays out the evidence

To make his point, De Zerbi went case by case.

Pedro Porro, he reminded everyone, went all the way with Spain at the World Cup. The defender carried a hamstring issue during the tournament, then tried to fast‑track his return. According to De Zerbi, Porro “felt it in training” yet still pushed to play against Aston Villa on 29 September, before suffering another problem.

The implication was clear: this was a player’s decision, driven by competitive instinct, not negligence in the treatment room.

Lucas Bergvall’s situation, De Zerbi argued, was similar in its inevitability. The midfielder turned his knee in the first minute against Manchester United on 10 October, played on, and only felt significant pain the next day. Again, the coach asked where the medical staff could realistically have intervened differently.

Robertson’s story is rooted in workload. Four games in a row for Scotland during the recent international window, then a “small problem” that ruled him out of the trip to Manchester. He returned to play 65 minutes against Coventry and came off with fatigue. For De Zerbi, that is the natural toll on a player who has been pushed hard, not a scandal.

Across all three examples, his question was the same: what exactly is the medical team supposed to have done wrong?

Stamford Bridge record dismissed as ‘not our problem’

If the injuries are a “normal situation in football”, Tottenham’s record at Stamford Bridge is anything but. One win in 42 attempts is a statistic that usually hangs over this fixture like a cloud.

De Zerbi brushed it aside.

“What is the problem?” he asked, pointing out that neither he nor most of his players were involved in those previous failures. The weight of history, he insisted, is not one of the “many problems” Spurs already have to manage this week.

His concern is the here and now: who is fit, who can start, who can help Spurs punch through a ground that has so often repelled them.

He will go into it short of bodies, reliant on those who have survived the early‑season storm, and trusting that the people tasked with keeping his squad healthy are doing everything they can.

If Tottenham are to tear up their Stamford Bridge script, it will not be because of a medical report. It will be because, even with a depleted cast, they finally impose a new story on an old stage.