Ange on Richarlison's recovery: "We've taken our time with him... he's looking lean"

Ange Postecoglou has explained how our medical and sport science teams have used Richarlison's time out to not just to rehabilitate his injury, but to build his fitness levels ahead of his return to action.

The Brazil international featured off the bench in our first two matches of the campaign against Leicester City and Everton, but has been out since late August with a knee injury.

Ange told us earlier in the week that he was hopeful Richy would join Heung-Min Son in being available to face West Ham in the early kick-off at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday.

Speaking in his pre-match press conference on Friday, Ange was asked what had been done differently 'to stop the injury recurring'. "We've taken our time with him," he replied. "It hasn't been just about him recuperating and recovering from the injury, we've tried to use it to really build his core fitness base up.

"To be fair to him, he's worked awfully hard, he's trimmed down, he looks really lean and he's worked really hard. So, we've tried to use it (this time out) almost as another pre-season for him on an individual basis, not just to get him to recover from his injury, to be fair he probably recovered from his injury a couple of weeks ago, we've used this last couple of weeks to get his fitness base up and get him into really good physical condition, so we don't keep going through this cycle of him coming back and then breaking down again.

"As I said, to be fair, he's worked really hard and had a good week of training. He's missed playing. He's an infectious guy as well, so it's good to have him back in the group."