Cartilage Free Captain

What am I supposed to say about this match? I really don’t know. Spurs rotated heavily, started a 17-year old kid, played decently well for a half, then conceded off a corner and a second one a few minutes later. There are injury questions hovering over Pape Sarr and Mikey Moore. Spurs can still win a European title.

I mean, that’s it. That’s all I got and that’s all that matters.

It’s time to rate the players. I guess.

Rate the players from 1⁄2 to 5 stars. If the player doesn’t deserve a rating due to minutes played, DO NOT RANK. I will round the stars up/down to the nearest half-star for the player ratings later this week.

We are just over a week away from the end of the Premier League season, which typically means a huge ramp up of pressure as placings for relegation and qualification for European football are finalized.

For Tottenham Hotspur though, it was just another Friday, with nothing to play for except pride and some semblance of form leading into Thursday’s Europa League final against Manchester United. That context set up an intriguing clash with Aston Villa, a side with everything to play for: sitting in sixth, and on the cusp of the Champions League places, and in need of the windfall that European qualification would provide.

Somewhat surprisingly, Ange Postecoglou wrapped the majority of his squad in cotton wool, naming what was very much a second-string side. Captain Son Heung-min made his first start following his injury lay-off as potentially the only nailed-on starter to feature in the XI and in need of match sharpness, with the likes of Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven not even in the squad. Aston Villa, on the other hand, named a side that was much closer to their best XI, as would be expected in their Champions League push.

Spurs lined up in a shape much more akin to a Jose Mourinho-esque 4-4-2, with Mathys Tel and Wilson Odobert playing through the middle and a very clear “two banks of four” structure keeping Villa from playing through the middle. There was also a distinct lack of a press, with Spurs sitting deep and looking to catch the Villains on the counter.

This led to a largely uneventful first half, as the Lilywhites sat off and Villa probed without much success. Spurs keeper Antonin Kinsky was forced into one very good save, as he palmed a Morgan Rogers flick-on past the post; and Spurs had a very exciting moment of their own as an extremely well-worked counter resulted in a heel flick from Odobert, only to be saved by Emi Martinez. If it had gone in, it would have potentially one of Spurs’ best goals this season. Instead, the ledger remained even at the close of the first half, with the only other moment of note a scuffle between Tel and Ezri Konsa as both teams started to get a bit heated.

Ange Postecoglou made a change early on in the second half which initially looked like minutes management, with Pape Matar Sarr replaced by Yves Bissouma, both likely features in the Europa League final. Unfortunately, maintaining fitness was seemingly not the cause for the substitution, as Sarr trudged down the tunnel accompanied by one of Spurs’ medical staff. Things then went from bad to worse as Villa opened the scoring: Ollie Watkins won the aerial battle for a corner kick, with his knock-down then flicked on past Kinsky by Konsa.

That lead was soon doubled. Spurs had been sitting off Villa all match but did so one time too many in a dangerous area as Boubacar Kamara found himself in acres of space at the top of Spurs’ 18-yard box. He rifled a shot past Kinsky as the Villa crowd began to allow themselves to dream of a return to the Champions League. For Spurs, though, things went from bad to worse as Mikey Moore was the next Tottenham player to go down, clutching at his leg and being subbed off. Late substitutions weren’t enough to get Spurs back into the match and Aston Villa cruised to a 2-0 win.

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In the battle before the battle, it was Tottenham Hotspur who scored a decisive win over Aston Villa, successfully lobbying the Premier League to move this fixture to Friday, providing a little more gap before next Wednesday’s Europa League final. Villa objected, which was in their right, but felt a little childish and wholly unnecessary.

That is because this outcome is never in doubt. Spurs are 100 percent focused on Bilbao, with Friday’s fixture solely serving as a tune-up (and obligation). Meanwhile, Villa are in the thick of the top-five race, level on points with Chelsea heading into the final two matches. I think both groups of supporters would be happy for Villa to take all three points here.

Aston Villa (t-5th, 63pts) vs. Tottenham Hotspur (17th, 37pts)

Date: Friday, May 16

Time: 2:30 pm ET, 7:30 pm UK

Location: Villa Park, Birmingham

TV: USA Network (US), Sky Sports Premier League (UK)

Were Spurs still actually playing for something in the league, this might oddly be seen as a favorable fixture despite the opposition’s quality. Tottenham had the famous 4-0 win last season at Villa Park and won the reverse fixture this year 4-1 behind goals from Brennan Johnson, Dominic Solanke (x2), and James Maddison. Villa did win in the FA Cup this February, though.

As mentioned, Villa is level on points with Chelsea for seemingly the final Champions League place. With matches against both Europa League finalists, the chance of all six points is pretty high, but goal difference means Chelsea will probably need to stumble. That will not happen against United on Friday, but the final day at Forest (who also is in contention) should be massive.

Weekly spotlight: Mate...

Look, I know the first-choice players were not going to sit against both Palace and Villa, and I even used this space last week to talk through the options, but it was extremely frustrating to see Dejan Kulusevski pick up a knock and leave him out for Spurs’ most important match in years. With no James Maddison and Lucas Bergvall already, the dynamic attacker’s absence is even more painful.

That means Ange Postecoglou has zero margin for error health-wise on Friday. I know that some of the preferred XI is going to see the pitch, but their leashes have to be astronomically short. It is also the manager’s job to instruct and advise them to take as much caution as possible; for all intents and purposes, this match is no more meaningful than a friendly. Tone it down.

With all eyes on Italy this past week (because of the Rome Masters), I thought it’d be a good time to check in on what’s going on in Serie B. Here’s what we’ve got —-

Sampdoria has fallen further into the abyss.

The 1991 Scudetto winners were relegated from Serie B on Saturday, marking the first time in the club’s history that they will compete in Serie C.

It’s a further fall from grace for the Genoan club, which was Harry Winks’ loanee club during the 2022-23 season.

This was a disastrous season for Sampdoria. The club brought in Andrea Pirlo as a key part of their project. He was sacked three games into the season after failing to secure promotion last year. They went through a few more managers after that, only to finish 18th in the league.

It’s an even tougher road for Sampdoria from here.

Serie C is composed of 60 clubs in three different tables: North, Centre and South.

Only the top team from each table gets automatic promotion to Serie B (after a 38-game season). An additional 28 teams compete to achieve the final promotion spot for Serie B. It lasts a total of six rounds.

It looks like an absolutely miserable time. There are some interesting clubs here too: Crotone, Benevento, Pescara and SPAL.

We’re only in the second round of the playoffs, which begin this weekend. Here are the remaining clubs competing for the final spot to Serie B: Crotone, Vicenza, Giana Erminio, Ternana, Atalanta U23, Audace Cerignola, Vis Pesaro and Pescara.

And now for a quick Rome Masters recap: Because you all asked for it, we need to check in on the latest tennis scores. The Rome Masters is the last big tournament before Roland Garros (don’t worry, we’ll preview that soon), and players are going to be itching to get into form before hitting the famed red clay.

Men’s singles: Jannik Sinner decimated Madrid Masters champion Casper Ruud upon returning to the tour after serving his three-month ban. It’s hard not to see how Sinner won’t be entering RG as the odds-on favourite to win. But keep an eye on the Italian one-handed wonder in Lorenzo Mussetti, who’s already claimed four top-10 wins on clay this season.

Women’s singles: Aryna Sabalenka is out. Coco Gauff is cementing her position as the World No. 2, but will face a difficult test against last year’s French Open runner-up Jasmine Paolini. It’ll be an even more difficult task playing against the hometown favourite in front of the Italian crowd.

Fitzie’s track of the day: I Miss That Feeling, by Tennis

And now for your links:

Alasdair Gold: “Ange Postecoglou won’t rule out radical Pedro Porro move amid Tottenham problems”

Dan KP: “Ange Postecoglou hints at ‘creative’ solution to injury crisis ahead of Europa League final”

ESPN: “Barcelona clinch LaLiga title, domestic treble with win at Espanyol”

Editor’s note: This article came from a conversation with a few other Spurs fans in a private Tottenham Hotspur Discord channel. The upcoming Europa League final between Tottenham and Manchester United is a MASSIVE match from a financial perspective, with the winner getting Champions League football next season and potentially netting as much as £100m when all is said and done. The initial idea came from Joel Wortheimer, who wondered, considering the vast amount of money at stake, whether the two clubs would ever consider coming together to make a mutually beneficial hedge that would lower the winners’ overall haul, but also make sure that the loser doesn’t necessarily walk away empty handed.

It’s a fascinating idea, and Discord member/Carty Free lurker DanielR1983, who works in finance, pitched it to me and said he wanted to write it up as an article on Carty Free. I agreed as I thought it would provoke some fun discussion. This piece is the result. Hope you enjoy it.

Let’s talk about the finances of this Europa league final. As a way of a quick introduction. I’m a finance guy. I became a Spurs fan when I was an MBA intern at an investment bank in London helping big multinational corporations manage their credit risk. As a big sports guy, I figured I had to have a team, and well, here we are.

It’s been a general trend over recent years for football guys to try and moonlight as finance guys. You would think I would love that, but actually I don’t. I think it’s horrible. It takes away from the fun of football games and tends to focus on the worse parts of finance (the accounting). Getting sucked into PSR rabbit holes, and wondering if you should sell the club’s best ever striker or your 23 year winger who leads the team in scoring is just generally not much fun at all.

However, a European final worth potentially £100m to both United and Spurs? That’s the stuff finance guys dreams are made of. So, let’s talk about what Spurs (and United) should do financially in this situation.

To me one of the cool things about finance are the stories it tells, and how creative it can get. So, let’s start by imagining we are in an Iowa cornfield in 1848.

Yeah, really. Stay with me here.

Close your eyes and imagine you’re an Iowa farmer. You’ve just come out of an awful, no-good year. Your two best farm hands who you depend on for everything pulled a hammy a month into the planting season. As a result you had to deputize your 18-year-old son (who you have high hopes for), and an unproven guy from across town to keep the train on the tracks... and well that didn’t happen.

The train fell off the tracks, rolled into a ditch and then burst on fire.

Maybe you should have seen that coming, but you didn’t. So here you are: struggling to get by, with nothing going right. Every day everyone tells you to give it up, it’s not been good enough. There’s no way you’re going to get a good crop this year. Nevertheless, you keep grinding it out as best you can and get everything planted.

You and your spouse sit down and look at the ol’ handy farmers almanac and realize that you’re looking at an unprecedented favorable outlook for rain. You also get news that a few of the big farms down the road have had equally bad years, so you think maybe, somehow the corn will go for a good price. If the rain actually hits, and you actually got the seeds in the ground you might somehow, someway, despite everything that happened, be able to pull out with a windfall that might save the farm.

Before long, you get word that your rivals down the road actually might have figured things out too. This would be calamitous as two big harvests mean the price of corn will drop and you’ll lose your shirt. You’ll have to let those farm hands go. You might even be forced to sell your best Rolls Royce plow to keep food on the table next year.

So what do you do? Do you sit there hoping for the best in a year when everything has gone wrong? No, of course not.

Instead, you take the train up to Chicago with a few of the other farmers who had a bad year. You gather up as many of the corn buyers in the big city as you can and you give them this pitch:

“Hey, it’s been a rough year for all of us. If things go how they’ve been going you’re looking at paying $200 a bushel of corn which we know would be bad for you. So how about we just agree here and now for you to buy all the corn you can for $75. You get a decent if not great price, and we get a little peace of mind that we won’t go out of business”.

The buyers, not wanting to take the risk, eagerly agree. In fact, they say This is such a good idea! We should do this all the time!

Congratulations! You just invented the modern financial market.

Spurs and United now find themselves in a similar situation: locked into a one game European final match that can either save their season, or lead to financial ruin. Both teams have had awful, no good years. Both teams have owners who have warned of the implications of failing to get the revenue associated with winning the Europa league. Both teams, like those farmers and Iowa can’t sit back and just hope for the best.

You can’t hope Maddison’s knee holds out [Ed: this was written before Maddison and Deki actually blew their knees out]. You should know better. Does Brennan have a few more tap-ins in him? Probably? But maybe not?

You gotta make a deal. You need to implement a hedge.

So what can that look like? Here’s some ideas:

Option 1: The Paratici Special™.

Offsetting options: United agree to an option to buy Dane Scarlett for £45m. This option becomes mandatory if United win the Europa league.

At the same time, Tottenham would agree to an option to buy… whoever might be a good squad player from United for £45m pounds. This option becomes mandatory if Tottenham win the Europa league.

If either team wins Europa, they get Champions League football and the windfall that comes with it. Sure, with the hedge that team may overpay for a prospect who may or may not come good, but who cares – Champions League, baby!

And the losing team? Well they get to sell a prospect for a really, really good fee. You’re not out of the woods totally, but at least you don’t have to sell your best plow. You hold on to your guys, and go again with one game a week the following season. You live to fight another day.

Option 2: The Harry Kane Special, aka the Gentleman’s Agreement™.

You’re probably thinking all of this is counter to the sporting integrity of the game. But what if I told you that in fact there’s already a precedent in English football?

In 2002, Birmingham City and Norwich came to a “gentlemen’s agreement” which said the loser of the match would be able to keep the gate receipts for the Championship play-off final. The winner got to promote to the Premier League, and the loser got a decent boost of cash from playing a final at Wembley.

This tradition has been repeated enough times that many people believe it to be an official policy. It’s not though – it’s just two teams coming together to make prudent financial decisions for the sustainability of their clubs.

The potential revenue for Champions League goes far beyond the amount of gate receipts you’d get from the one match. So to really hedge your bets you’d need to do something more substantial. Here’s what a potential package could look like:

Loser keeps the prize money or the Europa league final: ~£10.9m

Teams agree to split gate receipts for their respective European campaigns for the next year: ~£10m+.

Teams agree to a series of team friendlies with the Europa League runner up keeps the gate receipts: ~£5m+.

At the end of the day, there’s no real reason for United and Spurs to sit there and just wait and see who has the worse luck. This allows both teams to stave off the consequences of their no good, rotten, horrible seasons (just please don’t let United ask Harry Kane what he thinks about Daniel Levy and “gentleman’s agreements,” that could go poorly).

The main point is that if we’re going to force ourselves to learn financial models to enjoy football we might as well do the fun and cool stuff rather than the skullduggery of “amortization” or “depreciation”.

Also, we really really can’t afford to sell Romero, and we really really could use another #10 next year.

If it feels like you’ve seen Ange Postecoglou give a lot of press conferences lately, that’s because he has. And today was another one, the usual pre-match press conference ahead of tomorrow’s Premier League match at Aston Villa. You know this match, it’s the one that the Premier League stepped in and rescheduled to give Tottenham Hotspur more preparation time before the Europa League final in Bilbao, which got Villa fans super salty.

But Villa getting pissy didn’t come up in today’s press conference. Instead, the focus was almost entirely on the BRAND NEW INJURY CRISIS Spurs are navigating ahead of the final. Yesterday, the club announced that Dejan Kulusevski had knee surgery after being injured from a Marc Guehi tackle in last weekend’s match against Crystal Palace. Deki joins Lucas Bergvall and James Maddison on the sidelines, leaving Spurs short-handed at central midfield.

There were rumors floating around the Tottenham Hotspur Cinematic Universe (i.e. social media) yesterday that Bergvall might be back in the frame to play in Bilbao after he was spotted on the grass without a boot, but when asked, Postecoglou was quick to quash those rumors. In short: Beef Ball won’t play.

“No, it is still the same sort of timeframe. He was never a long-term one but he has literally just got out of the boot and taken his first tentative steps on the grass but he won’t be available.”

(Why Beef Ball? Because of this Bluesky post. You’re welcome.)

Deki’s injury was equally unfortunate, and Ange was happy to go into a little more detail about what happened, and how long Kulusevski might be out of the team.

“Disappointing news. Initially we thought it wasn’t too serious. The medical team were worried structurally about how the knee was but it blew up the day after and we knew there was an issue there. He has had surgery and it will put him out for at least a few months. We will see. To be honest, I have only got basic information at the moment in terms of recovery but it will certainly put him out for a while.

“Yeah, gutted for him, gutted for Lucas and gutted for Madders and Radu, because, say all four of those, it’s not like - knock on wood because we’ve had enough of those - but it’s not like a muscle injury or anything. It’s just circumstance, stuff that probably happens in every football game, but it doesn’t have the damage that it did and unfortunately for them it came at the wrong time of the year.

So, yeah, gutted for Deki because like I said I thought there was real growth in him this year. We integrated him into a new position which I think he was really getting to grips with and really making an impact and I think he’s grown as a player this year, he captained his country and and then sort of got hit with a foot injury which set him back but then typical him he worked hard at rehab and was really important for us away at Bodo and started looking like he was getting back to himself, which would have been great for us, so for him to get another setback is is disappointing. But mentally he’s a very strong guy and I’m sure he’ll use this as a catalyst to come back stronger.

So how long will Deki be out? Ange refused to put a number on it, but he did put it in terms of “months” rather than weeks, and yeahhhhhhhh that’s not great, is it?

“No, it wouldn’t be anywhere near 12 months, but again me putting a timeframe on wouldn’t be right because he only had the surgery yesterday. We’ll get some more information and a lot of that just depends on how players progress, but it’s fair to say months, but how many months I wouldn’t speculate at the moment.

Ange is of course no stranger to player injuries this season — it’s been a constant refrain, and he seemed fine with once again pointing out how Tottenham hasn’t had the rub of the green with player health.

“Look, I guess because it’s been a constant with us during the year, we’ve kind of become almost accustomed to it. It would probably be a bigger issue if we had a smooth run all year and got hit with injuries now and deal with missing key players, but we’ve pretty much been without key players all season. There hasn’t been a time where we had a three or four week spell with our strongest line-up, so the boys are getting on with it. They’re disappointed for the people involved and Deki being the latest one because he had a fantastic first part of the year for us and was just working his way back into it. At the same time as I keep saying to the group all along, you can’t pick and choose when these opportunities come along. There could be other years where we don’t have these disruptions and injuries, but we don’t get to a final. The reality of it is now the opportunity is there and whatever happens between now and then, we’ve got to make sure we’re ready for it.”

That said, Ange did not commit to phoning in the Villa match, alluded to by reporters asking questions about “sporting integrity.” Ange will still play to win the match, and while there will obviously be rotation, don’t expect to see Spurs’ U21 squad at Villa Park on Friday.

“We are certainly going to go out there and try to win the game tomorrow and put out a team that hopefully gets the job done. I’m not sure about the integrity. There have been times this year when we have had to field weakened teams because of injury. Does that affect the integrity? People are thinking there is some sort of competitive balance that exists that doesn’t exist over the course of the season. I would be very surprised if people were questioning our integrity to try to win a game tomorrow.”

Tottenham kick off against Aston Villa tomorrow at 2:30 p.m. ET / 7:30 p.m. BST. The match will be televised on USA Network in the colonies, and Sky Sports in the UK.

Tottenham Hotspur’s first team aren’t the only Spurs who will play in a final next week. Attacking midfielder Jamie Donley and goalkeeper Josh Keeley have progressed to the League One playoff final with Leyton Orient after a dramatic 1-1 (3-3 [1-4]) penalty shootout victory over Stockport County last night at Stockport’s Edgeley Park. Both Keeley and Donley are at Orient this season on loan.

With the score level after the first leg and Orient up 1-0 in the second leg, Keeley got wrong-footed at the near post and let a sloppy deflected goal in for the equalizer. But he came up huge in the shootout. Keeley saved once against Hatters winger Jack Diamond, Stockport put another penalty kick off the post, and Ethan Galbraith slotted home the winner to send the Mighty O’s to Wembley for a chance to promote to the English second division.

Donley’s stats in this match don’t exactly jump off the page, but he was an influential player in this match, putting in a number of dangerous free kicks and getting involved in Orient’s buildup. He’s been one of Orient’s better players this season and should be a starter in the final.

A couple of days ago I wrote that Donley has been attracting interest from West Bromwich Albion for a Championship loan, but if Orient were to be promoted it wouldn’t shock me if both Donley and Keeley extend their stay at Brisbane Road for another year. They’ve both certainly been embraced by the fanbase.

Orient will now face the winner of Charlton Athletic and Wycombe Wanderers, who had a scoreless first leg. The final will take place on Sunday, May 25 at Wembley Stadium.

The world can be a pretty cruel place sometimes. There are wars and atrocities, nasty people being mean to each other, pain and suffering. And then sometimes people try to blackmail Tottenham Hotspur’s Korean superstar Son Heung-Min.

That’s according to a short piece in Reuters, who report that Spurs’ club captain has filed a complaint to South Korean authorities about being blackmailed over a claim that he has gotten someone pregnant. The Korean media reported that an unnamed woman had threatened Son that she was pregnant with his child, and demanded payment to keep a potentially damaging report out of the media.

Son, naturally, has called the allegations completely false and has made a complaint to South Korean police. Reuters says that police have arrested a 20-year old woman and 40-year old man in connection to the blackmail attempt.

Son’s agents released the following statement:

“The police are currently investigating, so we will let you know the results as soon as they are available. We’d like to tell you that Son Heung-Min is clearly the victim of this incident.”

Well, duh. Of course he is. I mean, I suppose it’s within the realm of possibility that Sonny could’ve gotten someone pregnant in South Korea. But remember, this is a guy who has famously said he’s not going to get married or even have a serious relationship while he’s still playing professional football because he doesn’t want to distract from his career. If you told me Son lived a life of absolute monk-like celibacy, I’d 100% believe you.

Also, Sonny is one of, if not the, most famous and influential sports and media personality in his home country. He’s incredibly, mind-blowingly famous, like K-Pop superstar level popular. Naturally that’s going to attract some bad actors.

I don’t think we really need to pay much attention to this story. Sonny is mega-wealthy, people suck, it happens. I also seriously doubt this is weighing on him at all here at the tail end of the season; he has people to deal with this kind of crap for him, and they will.

But man, who would do this to one of the nicest guys in football? That’s just mean and awful.

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.

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.