Pléa is gone for the year, and PSV's attack just got thinner
Alassane Pléa will not play again in 2026. PSV confirmed it, and the club thinks the injury, picked up on the training ground, keeps him out for the rest of the calendar year (3) (12) (15). Peter Bosz watched it happen. "I feel for him badly. It is very sad what has happened to him and that he has to watch from the sidelines for a long time again," he said (1).
This is a 33-year-old striker who had already spent a heavy year fighting back. Now he starts over. PSV lose a body up front for every league game and every Champions League night until January, and squads at this level are not built with a spare senior striker sitting in the stand.
The other new arrival up top has not filled the gap. Sam Lammers came in this summer from FC Twente and it has not worked yet (4). Two strikers signed, one injured until the new year, one still searching. That is the shape of the problem.
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The Twente defeat was not a blip
FC Twente 3–2 PSV, in De Grolsch Veste on Sunday September 20, and the way it happened is the part that stings. Twente came back from 1–2 down late to win it (2).
Bosz needed a week to switch off afterwards. That is what a defeat like this does to a title race: it does not just cost three points, it costs the manager his sleep and it hands every rival a template. Twente are now a genuine title rival, and Bosz says so himself. "They have already proved it," he said (17).
The league table has PSV third on 16 points from seven games, +14 goal difference, form of W-W-D-W-L (5) (2). Third place in October is not a crisis. But the loss in Enschede is the one result in that run that came from a team above them, and it came from a lead given away.
A very good week for the players who left
Ivan Perisic played the full 90 minutes of Croatia's 0–7 defeat to England in the Nations League in Rijeka, the heaviest loss in Croatian history (6) (7). At 37, that is a night you do not shake off quickly, and PSV need him fresh for a congested October.
Mauro Júnior had the better trip. Brazil beat India 0–4 in a friendly and the PSV man came off the bench, meaning he featured in every Brazil game of this international window (8) (16). Four league titles in Eindhoven, the captain's armband, and now a Brazil debut in the same year. He returns with confidence and mileage in his legs.
The one that worries Bosz is Ruben van Bommel. The 22-year-old broke into the starting eleven for the national team, and Bosz is openly concerned about the load on a player coming back from a cruciate ligament injury (8) (9) (13) (14). "That would not be sensible," he said of pushing him (14). Van Bommel's rise is real. So is the risk.
What to watch
Heerenveen at home on Friday October 9, 20:00 CEST, then RB Leipzig away in the Champions League on Tuesday October 13 (fixtures).
That is the test of everything above. With Pléa out for the year and Lammers still not producing, PSV have to score their way through October, and Bosz has to manage van Bommel's minutes across two competitions in five days. Heerenveen is the game PSV must win to keep pace at the top. Leipzig is the one that decides whether this Champions League campaign has legs. Watch who starts up front on Friday. That tells you what Bosz actually thinks of his options.
