Sometimes your luck just isn’t in as a footballer and for Tottenham’s Harry Winks, that has certainly been the case at Sampdoria.
He joined the Italian club on loan in the summer transfer window, in search of regular playing time that wasn’t on offer under Antonio Conte.
He’s yet to get anywhere close to that with the Serie A squad, though, with several reports explaining that he’s barely trained at the club after enduring a ‘nightmare start’.
Gazzetta dello Sport explain what’s going on today, and how the midfielder, who has been in Italy since August 30th, ‘is not ready’ for his new club.
They explain that Sampdoria had considered him the ‘centrepiece’ of their summer transfer window but Winks ‘has yet to take the field’ and it’s all because of ankle injury that the Tottenham man has been nursing since 2017.
So far Winks has had one training session with his new teammates but has now ‘disappeared’ in the eyes of the coach, who continues to say any discussion about the loanee is for the medical department and not him.
The story is ‘well known’ as far as Gazzetta are concerned, putting Winks in the category of ‘boundless talent’ beset by injuries.
For him it’s an ankle injury picked up against Burnley in April 2017, something he has had to manage since that point.
It was felt the Tottenham man ‘kept the situation under control’ but the newspaper say he arrived in Genoa is ‘evidently suboptimal condition’, so much so that Sampdoria drew up a ‘specific recovery plan’ for him.
That’s seen him out of the picture and while Winks trained alone yesterday, it will take time before he can work at full pace with the group and ‘patience is needed’.
There is a hope he could be on the bench for the clash with Monza on October 2nd but that is very much a hope at this moment in time. At best he remains two weeks away having the green light to train at full pace.
That’s not great for Sampdoria, who need him in their fight to avoid relegation and might be thinking they should have looked elsewhere at this point.
