As the 2025/26 Premier League season trudges along, Tottenham Hotspur supporters are becoming increasingly fed up with the Djed Spence experience at left back, and after watching him get torched in another big game by Arsenal on Sunday, the fans have to be wondering what happened to winter signing Souza.
Although Souza is just 19 years of age and not at an age where most players are starting as left backs in the Premier League, he was one of only two winter transfers by Tottenham this year on a team with a roster possessing a laundry list of pressing needs.
And when Souza has played at left back this season, he has shown that he actually already does belong in the Premier League. Watching Spence flounder once more as a right-footed left back in the lineup, it's hard to not to feel that, juxtaposing their displays, Souza is already a superior option to a miscast option.
Tottenham have to bring in Souza for Djed Spence
Spence is much more comfortable on the right side of the formation. On the left, he hamstrings the attack so much that it completely destroys the left winger and makes life harder for the No. 10 and striker both going forward and even tracking back because of how imbalanced the formation gets.
It's anyone's guess as to when Destiny Udogie returns from his latest injury mishap, so Tottenham pretty much have to throw Souza into the fire again at left back. The entire structure collapses with Spence as a left back, and Tottenham have known that this was the problem, which is why they went out and signed a left back in the winter in the first place.
In an ideal world, Spurs would have sigend someone with more experience, and they actually did try to bring in Andrew Robertson from Liverpool to pair with Souza so that the Brazilian teenager could develop. But Spurs don't have that luxury anymore. They paid up for Souza because his potential was too special to pass up on, and now they have to make him learn on the job.
That's the thing, though, he is the best option they have with Udogie out. At least with Souza, Spurs can move the ball and have a fighting chance as a team. When Spence starts against any sort of competent Premier League team and coach, the opposition feasts on him and uses him as a weakness to completley deconstruct and already flimsy Spurs side.