This Tottenham Hotspur season has been defined by injuries, so perhaps it was fated that they would suffer another two right at the end, when Ange Postecoglou’s side were just a few games away from writing their place in the club’s history books.
Losing Lucas Bergvall to an ankle injury the day before the Bodo/Glimt first leg was bad enough. Bergvall has been the surprise find of the season, arguably the best player since he broke into the Premier League side just before Christmas. In difficult circumstances, he has performed heroically, Spurs’ best and bravest ball-carrier, an obvious future superstar.
But then, just over an hour into that first leg on Thursday evening, James Maddison went down clutching his knee. He was taken off and sent for scans. While the full extent of the damage was unclear even on Tuesday afternoon, the overall picture is bleak. Postecoglou was downbeat about it on Sunday afternoon, saying that it was “not looking promising”.
Put these two injuries together and it means Spurs will have to play in Bodo on Thursday night, their biggest game for six years, without their two most in-form midfielders. It could not have happened at a worse time, as Spurs try to defend a two-goal first-leg lead, with a place in the final at stake. If they successfully make it out of Aspmyra Stadion, they will set up the most thrilling climax to the strangest Spurs season in recent history. If they lose, they will fly home with very little to show for this season other than a historically bad league finish.
The job of the head coach is to find solutions and Postecoglou will have to come up with something. For the first leg against Bodo/Glimt, it was Yves Bissouma, perhaps surprisingly, stepping into Bergvall’s shoes. He did well, especially defensively, giving his best Spurs performance of the season. If Spurs want to make life difficult for their hosts on Thursday and stop them turning possession into shots, then having the double-protection of Bissouma and Bentancur in front of the defence could be invaluable again.
But in a sense, that is the easy bit. Spurs were very good without the ball in the first leg. The challenge will be how they move it forward under pressure, in uncomfortable conditions, without their two most important players in that area. No one at Spurs drives forward with the ball like Bergvall. No one can pause, turn and fire a clever forward pass like Maddison. (And then there is Maddison’s forward movement beyond the front line, a secret weapon of sorts that led to Spurs’ winner in Frankfurt and second goal in the Bodo/Glimt first leg.)
The fear is that if Spurs just have Bissouma and Rodrigo Bentancur sit in front of their defence on Thursday, then they could get so badly penned in that they never get out and that the north Norwegians put so much pressure on Tottenham that they eventually wilt. They need to find a way to get out.
That leaves two options, assuming that Bissouma keeps his place: Dejan Kulusevski and Pape Matar Sarr. While Sarr’s energy and movement are excellent, he feels like more of a bench option for this game. The hope must be that Kulusevski, with his extra experience and technical skill, is ready to perform as well as he did in the first half of the season.
It feels like a long time ago now, but Kulusevski was head and shoulders above his team-mates in the first half of this exhausting season. (Thursday will be Spurs’ 56th competitive game, meaning that if they reach the final, they will play 60 over the whole year.) Remember that for the first few months of the season, he largely played as a central midfielder, outshining Maddison at times, driving Spurs forward, creating chances and scoring goals. In December and January, he was generally deployed wide on the right — the position he played last season — rather than in the midfield three. Even on bad days, he scored brilliant individual goals, the perfect chip at Goodison Park in a disastrous 3-2 defeat the ultimate example.
Kulusevski is a physical machine and he had been involved in every single one of Spurs’ games by the time he reported the pain in his left foot after the defeat to Manchester City on February 26. The scans revealed that he had a stress fracture. Under normal circumstances, he would be expected to stay in a protective boot for two months before he could even start running again. That would have meant a return to training and playing around now, in early May.
But Kulusevski was desperate to play as big a role as possible in the climax of Spurs’ season. He wanted to get back out there alongside his team-mates as fast as he could. He has always been obsessive about fitness and recovery. He measures the pH value of water before he drinks it and weighs his food. He worked especially hard on his rehab and even had a hyperbaric treatment chamber installed at his home to help his foot recover. His target was always the second leg against Frankfurt, but he made it back before then, coming on at Wolves a few days before.
Since returning from injury, Kulusevski has been steadily heading in the right direction. He did not start in the first leg against Bodo/Glimt, but did start at West Ham United on Sunday. That was his second start since returning from the stress fracture, although it was such a poor game that even he struggled to lift it.
Perhaps the biggest question going into Thursday night is whether Kulusevski is now closer to being back to his physical best. Because if he is, and if he can push Spurs forward, carry the ball upfield, create chances, and shoot from the edge of the box, then he could transform the whole dynamic of the game by himself.
Tottenham cannot play the football that you might associate with them at their best, but they showed in the first leg that they had the physicality and individual ability to win the game. A fit Kulusevski in Bodo on Thursday could help them do that again.
(Top photo: Visionhaus/Getty Images)