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Photo by Luke Walker/Getty Images
Photo by Luke Walker/Getty Images

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£20m Tottenham player looks absolutely exhausted after first pre-season test under Thomas Frank

Charles Jones
Charles Jones

Tottenham Hotspur are embarking on a new era under Thomas Frank, and pre-season is now underway.

Tottenham’s players have reported back to Hotspur Way, and this is a fresh chance for many of these players to make a good impression.

Manor Solomon is back in Tottenham training after spending last year on loan at Leeds, while Pedro Porro returned early to training and would likely have made a good impression in doing so.

Thomas Frank hasn’t wasted any time in putting his players through their paces, and one of his first drills was quite gruelling.

Indeed, Frank put his team through a 1km sprinting drill, and after the drill, a few of Tottenham’s players looked absolutely drained.

Thomas Frank looks concerned during a Brentford match.
Photo by Cameron Smith – Danehouse/Getty Images

Djed Spence looks drained after Thomas Frank pre-season test

Thomas Frank had his players go through a difficult running drill in their first pre-season session.

Stat Sports were there to record the session, and in the video shared on TikTok, it has to be said that a few Spurs players looked exhausted.

Thomas Frank and his staff have taken the 1K Test to Tottenham As we talked about in previous posts, the 1K Test is 1000m (10 lengths of a full pitch) up and back as fast as you can. The idea is that your MAS (maximal aerobic speed) is then calculated by 1000 ÷ time in seconds (e.g., 3:10 = 1000 ÷ 190 = 5.26 m/s). Pro players will generally look to hit between 3mins 20 and 3mins 40 seconds. As you can hear on the clip on the next slide, Dom Solanke managed 3min 28secs, which would give him a MAS of 4.8 m/s. By the end of preseason, Spurs would test the players again and look to improve that MAS score, which essentially means he’s gotten fitter with targeted, individualised training drills ✅

Dominic Solanke notably looked tired after this test, while Djed Spence also looked like he’d found things difficult as he was taking deep breaths and shaking his head.

Interestingly, George Abbott was clocked as the fastest player at Tottenham during this drill, and that won’t have harmed his chances of being given a first-team shot next season.

Tottenham’s upcoming pre-season plans

These sessions at Hotspur Way are going to be vitally important in terms of building fitness ahead of the new season.

Indeed, while Thomas Frank will want to do as much work as possible with his players, his preparations will be slightly disrupted in a few weeks’ time.

Tottenham head to Asia for a pre-season tour later this month, and that will provide its own challenges in terms of travel, fatigue and media/ambassadorial duties.

After finishing 17th in the Premier League last season, Tottenham need to knuckle down and prepare for the new season, and, unfortunately, a pre-season tour halfway across the globe may not be the best way to get ready for what is bound to be another difficult campaign.