It’s one of those days where there’s not much Tottenham Hotspur news and the news that’s out there are mostly opinion articles about how bad everything is. Who wants to read that? I certainly don’t want to. But there IS some good news ahead of Spurs’ trip to Madrid tomorrow — Igor Tudor will have a trio of defensive players available to him for selection in Madrid. According to Football.London, Djed Spence, Radu Dragusin, and Cuti Romero will all be available against Diego Simeoni’s Atletico.
That’s pretty big. Spence has been out a couple of weeks and Dragusin has been both hobbled and, it must be said, kinda bad in the interim. However, having him back means more options for Tudor during a pretty fraught time. It means Spurs will almost certainly be able to play actual fullbacks/wingbacks in matches instead of deputizing players like Archie Gray in those positions, or starting a young player like Souza who’s barely been able to acclimate to his new team.
In addition, Micky van de Ven will also be available, since his one match suspension for his DOGSO red card last week will take effect in this weekend’s Premier League match against Liverpool, and not in European competition.
So it’ll likely be something pretty dang close to a first choice back line for Tudor, depending on how he wants to set up. That could be something like a back three of Danso, Romero, and Van de Ven with Pedro Porro and Spence as wing-backs, unless Tudor decides to do something crazy like play a back four.
The defense has been a PROBLEM lately under Tudor, but he’s also not had Romero, arguably Spurs’ best player and the club captain, available for the past four matches. If Spurs can put out a solid defensive line and hold that line in Madrid, then who knows — perhaps they might just be able to get another decent away result in European competition. That’d be nice, right?