There’s gallows humor... and then there’s Tottenham Hotspur’s reality. When Dejan Kulusevski was subbed off in the first half of Spurs’ loss at home to Crystal Palace after an awful tackle from Marc Guehi, Ange Postecoglou said that it didn’t look too bad at the time. Numerous commentators instantly made jokes in the comments on this website that this obviously meant he was about to have his leg amputated.
Well, they weren’t too far off. There were rumors this morning that Deki was a doubt for the final, which we dutifully wrote up, but the reality is much worse — the club announced on social media today that Kulusevski has had surgery on his right patella and is (obviously) out for the rest of the season and who knows how long afterwards.
deep resigned sigh
I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on this blog, so I won’t even pretend to diagnose this surgery or what it means. There’s plenty of time for that later. That said, this is nigh disastrous. Deki’s injury, along with those to Lucas Bergvall and James Maddison, mean Spurs are down to three healthy senior midfielders — Rodrigo Bentancur, Yves Bissouma, and Pape Sarr. Neither of them are especially creative players, and the few times we’ve played them all together it uhhhh hasn’t gone well, i.e. the 4-0 loss to Liverpool.
Now, Liverpool’s a very good team and Manchester United are... not. But it still really, really, really, really REALLY (repeat x100) sucks donkey. It sucks rhino. It sucks bronto! It sucks blue whale, the largest animal to ever exist on planet Earth.
And yes, it also sucks that blue whale’s father.
(And before anyone starts digging into Ange for playing Deki vs. Palace, 1) it’s not like Spurs have an infinite pool of midfielders anyway, and 2) Deki was in bad form and needed minutes to get better, I’d 100% have played him on Sunday if I were in charge. Plus it’s not like Postecoglou instructed Guehi to make a shithead tackle on him. ...Or maybe he did? #AngeOut)
The only other thing I want to say here is that this morning’s reports from the Manchester Evening News and Matt Law are pretty hilarious in context. Whatever source they had in writing those “Deki is a doubt” stories were almost entirely full of crap — the only thing they got right was that the injury was more serious than initially though, and it’s pretty damn funny to see the club come out in response to those stories with an “aktshually, he’s having surgery”. Maybe they’ll find out who the club leaker is after all? Whoever it is probably knows Matt Law.
Anyway, this blows and I’m extremely grumpy about it all.