Prior to suffering an injury before Tottenham Hotspur's first win of the season against Coventry on Matchday 6, Savio was the best player on the team, at least in an attacking sense. With 2.8 key passes and 4.5 dribbles completed per game, Savio has been one of the most efficient wide creators and dribblers in European football, with only Lamine Yamal convincingly outproducing him when combining both categories.
Consider how badly Spurs were struggling before the Coventry win, that only makes what Savio was doing all the more impressive. But now that Tottenham have won twice by a combined score of 5-1 without Savio, the luster around the Brazilian star has diminished.
Mohammed Kudus has been vital to Spurs again
More to the point, the other left footed right winger in the squad, Mohammed Kudus, was excellent in both games. His incisiveness, skill, and grinta were all on display in both games, and while it's not that Savio lacks skill or work rate, Kudus was playing at a high level all season long in 2025/26 before his injury on an even worse Tottenham side - and now that he is fully fit, he has picked up where he left off.
Roberto De Zerbi and Tottenham Hotspur fans love both of these guys. As they should. Kudus and Savio are two of the best in the Premier League at taking a man on, beating them, and creating a chance, and in an ideal world, Spurs would play both. But the problem is that they are best on the right wing. They are not 10's, and if one were to play on the left wing over either Mathys Tel or Omar Marmoush, that would really hurt Spurs ability to score goals - and we all know how poor they have been at scoring goals, even with five in the last two games against Coventry and Chelsea.
Mohammed Kudus playing at such a high level these past two games is amazing news for Tottenham, and this team is so much better with the former West Ham United star in form like this. But with Kudus dazzling in two wins for the Lilywhites, the question about what to do with Savio and how to negotiate the playing time of both stars wingers, which was already something in the back of Roberto De Zerbi's mind, becomes an even bigger point of discussion. Because it's hard to justify taking out Kudus when he has been so instrumental, especially in this upset over Chelsea.