You might recall that Tottenham Hotspur suffered through a significant injury crisis in this past winter that left them without many of their best players for an extended period of time. Spurs finally got healthy and used that health to focus on the Europa League, helping get them to the upcoming final against Manchester United this Wednesday.
So as you can imagine the advent of another injury crisis is coming at a particularly bad time. Spurs are already without the services of Lucas Bergvall and James Maddison for the rest of the season, and now according to both Matt Law in the Telegraph and Samuel Luckhurst in the Manchester Evening News, Dejan Kulusevski is now also a doubt for the final in Bilbao.
Kulusevski limped off the field in the first half of Spurs’ 2-0 home loss to Crystal Palace this past Sunday after a nasty challenge by Palace captain Marc Guehi. Afterwards, Ange Postecoglou seemed to imply that the injury didn’t seem that bad and that it was just a knock. But anonymous “sources” in both Law and Luckhurst’s articles suggest that his “chances have gone down” to play in the final next Wednesday.
Now, look — our two primary sources for this news come from noted Tottenham disliker Law and a reporter for the Manchester Evening News, so if you’re narrowing your eyes a bit I don’t blame you. That said, there’s still a significant amount of smoke in the air about this. My guess is at minimum Deki’s injury is more serious than initially thought, but he still has a week to get ready for the final in Bilbao and I kinda suspect wild horses won’t keep him at least on the bench for this one.
But yowza, if he’s out, Spurs are in a world of hurt. That leaves them with exactly three first choice central midfielders — Yves Bissouma, Rodrigo Bentancur, and Pape Sarr, neither of whom are particularly known for their creativity. It would mean Ange will need to magic up some other way of getting the ball forward, and that’s likely to come through long balls from deep and play up the flanks through Destiny Udogie and Pedro Porro.
It’s probably time to place the rest of the midfield corps in bubble-wrap and play some academy kids this weekend at Villa.