Tottenham Hotspur took full advantage of Crystal Palace going down to 10 men less than 15 minutes into the match after a terrible red card tackle from striker Jean-Philippe Mateta, beating the rival Eagles at home 2-0 to make it three on the trot after a winless start to the season.
There were so many brilliant individual performances for Spurs on Saturday afternoon in front of their home fans, but one of the best was definitely right winger Mohammed Kudus. The job on the right side of the attack is his after the injury to Savio, who is still out after starting the season as the team's best attacking player, and there's a real chance one of Roberto De Zerbi's favorites does not relinquish his starting job.
Because in this form, Kudus is hard to bench, and he is back to the best football he was playing at the beginning of last season when he was the one player not even Thomas Frank could take the shine off of. In fact, before burnout set in after starting week after week and carrying the team before a season ending hamstring injury, Kudus was by far the best player on the team.
Mohammed Kudus is taking on all comers
Against Crystal Palace, Kudus had a world class corner for the opening goal, finding a wide open Archie Gray just beyond the six yard box. Throughout the game, he had Crystal Palace on strings, as expected, with five dribbles completed and four fouls drawn, leading Tottenham Hotspur in terms of combined dribbles completed and fouls drawn.
He made that output count, of course, with his assist and three total key passes. While Kudus failed to register a shot on target in three efforts and had a particularly embarrassing effort in which he essentially cleared the ball off the line instead of scoring on an open net after a generational assist attempt from youngster Luca Williams-Barnett off the bench, those ills can be forgiven when everything else was perfect.
These past three weeks, Kudus has succesfully leveled up his game, and after starting the season with fitness issues, the Ghanaian international is back in top form. Adding more scoring to his ledger will be key to both Roberto De Zerbi and Tottenham as the competition for attacking minutes continues to evolve, but Kudus showed on Saturday vs. Palace that he is back in his element and in top form for the Lilywhites.
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