Here are our Tottenham talking points after their woeful 4-1 defeat at Leicester City in the Premier League on Saturday afternoon
Rodrigo Bentancur is comforted by his team-mates after getting injured during the Premier League match between Leicester City and Tottenham Hotspur at The King Power Stadium
The week from hell
What a difference six days make. On Sunday night, everything was positive and Tottenham Hotspur had just deservedly beaten title-challenging Manchester City with a fully fit squad.
Then everything started to unravel. First it was discovered that captain Hugo Lloris had damaged his knee ligaments and would be out for at least six weeks.
Then assistant boss Cristian Stellini declared in his press conference that everyone else was available for the match at Leicester, unaware that Richarlison was at roughly the same time filming a video for Instagram that showed Yves Bissouma in the background in the dressing room on crutches with a protective boot on. The Mali international then underwent surgery on Friday on a stress fracture in his left ankle.
Next, in training ahead of the match at Leicester, Ryan Sessegnon suffered a new hamstring injury which will keep him out for at least six weeks, leaving 34-year-old Ivan Perisic as the only fit left wing-back for Antonio Conte, who himself had only just returned from surgery to remove his gallbladder.
Then came a horrendous display at the King Power Stadium compounded by a serious-looking knee injury to key midfielder Rodrigo Bentancur, who had put Tottenham ahead early in the game.
Add to that a proposed £42.5m three-year sponsorship by South Africa’s tourist board falling through due to an outcry in that country and Conte returning to the dugout but clearly looking like a man recovering after surgery and a real health scare, and it’s not been the greatest week for Tottenham Hotspur by any stretch of the imagination.
The only stroke of fortune for the north London club was that Manchester United, in the week, and Newcastle were both held to unexpected draws and Brighton behind them could only grab a point, meaning that the woeful display at Leicester was not as costly as it should have been.
The most frustrating thing in turn will be that Spurs could have taken advantage of their rivals’ dropped points and really pushed themselves into the top four race.
Instead Tottenham showcased their bewildering ability to lurch from the sublime to the ridiculous in the space of six days.
Last season they served up a similar scenario after a victory against Manchester City, that time securing a thrilling 3-2 triumph at the Etihad Stadium only to be so poor in the subsequent 1-0 defeat at Burnley that Conte suggested publicly that if he was the problem he would walk away.
This time, Spurs were gifted the ball repeatedly by a sloppy Leicester side in the opening minutes, took the lead through one such generous moment but never followed it up with any real desire or intensity in their game.
Everything that had been good six days earlier vanished in this match. There was little hunger, organisation or togetherness among the Spurs players and they parted almost every time Leicester swept up the pitch, the simplest of balls through the middle causing them no end of problems.
It was another case of ‘after the Lord Mayor’s show’ for this Tottenham team and you could feel the disappointment of Stellini. It had been confirmed before the game that having done the pre-match media duties for the still recovering Conte, the assistant manager would also take them afterwards with Conte likely to return for his first press conference in Milan on Monday night.
“I think today something changed after we scored. We turned off and in this league you can’t turn off,” Stellini told football.london. “You have to be consistent in all parts of the game. We struggled a lot after the first goal. We’re disappointed for that.
“[There’s] not an explanation because if you know what happens, you can change this. It happened also last season when we beat Manchester City we lost to Burnley. To be consistent is a long process, a mental process. You have to be better mentally, better in the approach. Today the approach was not bad, but after we scored the goal, something changed.
“We’re a team. The team has to change something. Not only individually. It’s about the desire. You want to play this game, it’s about recovering energy mentally. When you play a team like Manchester City maybe you use all the energy you have.
“To recover this energy, it’s like a battle and how much this battle can contain. You have to recreate the same energy. To have this battle bigger you have to work, and we have to do it.”
Spurs will need to pick themselves up again quickly for a big match in Milan with depleted numbers, but the worry will continue to be whether they can get themselves in the mood for every game not just the big ones. They’ve done nothing to suggest they merit such complacency.
Harvey Barnes scores to make it 4-1 in the Premier League match between Leicester City and Tottenham Hotspur at the King Power Stadium
Dreadful defence and awful attack
This was a game that was about poor Tottenham displays in and around both boxes. For as shaky as Tottenham were in defence, so they were blunt in attack.
At the back, all of the good work done by the backline in recent weeks with five clean sheets in their previous seven matches, including top drawer individual performances and as a unit against the attacking talent of City, was blown apart by the Premier League’s 14th-placed side.
A back three hinges upon its central lynchpin and after recent improved displays that were more in keeping with last season’s consistent performances, Eric Dier slipped back to his pre-and post-World Cup malaise.
Against City, the 29-year-old was handed the task of coming out of defence with aggression to track Bernardo Silva and he carried out with aplomb.
Fast forward six days and early on it looked like he’d been handed a similar tactic with James Maddison but the England midfielder was nowhere to be seen when Dier was caught out of position for Leicester’s second goal, scored by – yes you guessed it – James Maddison.
A poor pass from the back from Ben Davies was cut out before it reached Harry Kane and the ball ran through to Kelechi Iheanacho who had a wide channel to run into behind Dier before squaring for Maddison.
Iheanacho would prove to be Dier’s chief tormentor and just before half-time he ran at the England centre-back, who back-pedalled and continued agonisingly to stand off before spinning around for a dummied shot that never came, leaving himself all over the place before the Leicester attacker rolled a simple effort inside the left-hand post.
For the hosts’ fourth goal, Dier again decided that standing up against his opponent was the way to go and a grateful Harvey Barnes responded by firing his own effort past Fraser Forster.
Forster’s performance was tough to judge. The 6ft 6ins goalkeeper appears to be less inclined than Hugo Lloris to fly out of goal to narrow angles down and to suggest he’s rusty is difficult when he’s played four games to Lloris’ six in the six weeks since the World Cup break ended.
However, Leicester’s goals were all placed into the corners of his net, beyond his reach, starting with the rocket from Nampalys Mendy and those shots that were not fired towards the corners were palmed away by the former England goalkeeper.
In front of Forster, Japhet Tanganga was handed another start with Cristian Romero suspended. He began the game solidly but was caught between two players having a tough day in Dier and debutant Pedro Porro and his own game duly began to get shakier and shakier, culminating in being turned inside out by Barnes for a VAR-disallowed ‘goal’, which saw him withdrawn soon after by Conte.
Davinson Sanchez will feel aggrieved at missing out on the starting line-up after a good display at Preston and whenever the Colombian has got regular minutes under his belt and a rhythm to his game he’s looked a better player.
At the other end of the pitch, Kane, Son Heung-min and Dejan Kulusevski barely laid a glove on a Leicester defence that had looked vulnerable in the opening minutes. Spurs mustered just four shots on target from 11 in total on the day.
The front three’s ball retention was dreadful. Kulusevski racked up seven unsuccessful touches, more than double anyone else on the pitch and he was dispossessed twice.
Son was dispossessed three times and had one unsuccessful touch and, with Kane, played just 17 passes on the day, with only a 70.6% success rate. Between them the front three managed only four crosses and none of them reached a team-mate.
Both Son and Kulusevski had just one shot apiece and they went off target and Kane had only one which was on target. The latter did play two key passes but never looked capable of adding to his record 267 goals for the club.
Richarlison came on and offered precious little to help him try to in any way repay that big £60m summer fee and while at least Arnaut Danjuma tried to take the fight to Leicester with some driving runs they came without much quality at the end of them.
It was a performance that was worrying from back to front and out wide was no better.
Pedro Porro and Ivan Perisic ahead of the Premier League match between Leicester City and Tottenham Hotspur at The King Power Stadium
Wing-back woes
On Saturday night, Pedro Porro tweeted: “Sad about this debut. Giving up is not an option. Keep your head up.”
Porro’s debut made the Spurs fans as sad as he was. It was a difficult first taste of Premier League football for the 23-year-old Spaniard after all of the expectation built up by his prolonged transfer from Sporting.
From the outside looking in, it would have seemed to have made more sense to hand the £40m right wing-back his Tottenham bow in the Champions League, a competition he knows well and with a more similar style of football that would have been less of a sudden contrast to what he has been used to.
Porro may have been on Manchester City’s books but he never had the chance to adapt to England and the Premier League, spending his entire time away on loan in Spain and Portugal.
With Emerson Royal having put in his best shift in a Spurs shirt the previous weekend against City, there was also less pressure from the fans to play the January signing on this occasion.
Instead Porro was thrown to the Foxes in a fast-paced match up against one of the Premier League’s current most dynamic wingers in Barnes, who has eight goals and an assist in 20 league matches this season despite Leicester’s struggles.
Porro looked nervy from his first touch, which was a miscontrolled one and led to an attempted pass with an outstretched leg that instead went to a Leicester boot. Then within minutes he was sold a dummy by Barnes that all but sent him outside the stadium to get a burger from one of the vendor vans.
Chances to get forward were rare and the Spaniard had to play in a more defensive role than he would have been used to at Sporting. On one of the couple of occasions Porro did get up the pitch he sent a good low ball to Kulusevski that the Swede could not control right in front of goal and on the other occasion he beat one man with some fast feet only to lose the ball to a covering defender.
At the back, Porro was swept past too easily on the whole. He tried to dig deep for confidence, one strong run through the centre after an interception ending with him running into a third Leicester player after gliding past the first two.
It’s far too early to judge Porro after one game. Social media tried to do just that with Kulusevski after his ungainly debut against Brighton in the FA Cup a year previously and the Swede ended up transforming Tottenham’s season with his performances.
The latest Spurs signing needs to adapt to the pace of the English game and he will be a potent attacking threat down the right when he builds that relationship with Kulusevski.
Defensively Porro will benefit from having the confident and dynamic Romero alongside him, also aided by him speaking in his native Spanish, another reason why Davinson Sanchez’s exclusion from the starting line-up was surprising. Porro’s English language skills are basic, although he can understand most of what is said to him.
Stellini admitted to football.london that Porro needs to adapt to his new surroundings and made it clear that the new man was not alone in having a tough day at the office.
“Pedro, we think he was ready to play. For sure he’s ready to play in this league because he’s a great player with experience. We know also it’s not easy,” said the Spurs assistant boss.
“Changing league, the type of football you have to play maybe he needs time. He can react with all the team. The team has to help a player like Pedro who arrives now and needs time to play in this type of league.”
The Premier League is seen as the toughest of Europe’s major leagues to adapt to because of its pace and physicality, which means any skill must be shown within a split second and decisions made in an instant.
On the other flank, Porro need only look at Ivan Perisic. The 34-year-old Croatian has adapted to football in France, Belgium, Germany and Italy over his career but seems to be finding the England transition the hardest.
Perisic has plenty of quality going forward, particularly in his delivery and that’s why he has nine assists to his name in his 30 appearances for Spurs. On Saturday his corner caused the chaos leading to Bentancur’s goal.
However, defensively the right wing-back is finding the pace of the Premier League a tough experience. The nadir was his display at the Etihad Stadium when Riyad Mahrez repeatedly left him in his wake with his speed and trickery and he was at fault for three of the hosts’ four goals.
History has shown that Perisic will learn and adapt although his age counts against him with the pace of the Premier League, despite his fitness. The general rule of thumb is that foreign signings in the English top flight need at least 18 months to adjust to the competition, the style of football and the culture.
The problem for a club like Spurs is that they do not have the luxury of time and patience and that’s why quick adapters like Kulusevski and Bentancur have been so important to recent progress.
Sessegnon’s latest hamstring injury hands Perisic plenty of time to continue his adaptation period, but too much for a 34-year-old with three games a week for much of the time the 22-year-old will be out for.
That, among other problems, is something Conte will have to find a solution for.
Rodrigo Bentancur has handed Tottenham an injury scare ahead of Tuesday’s Champions League tie away at AC Milan
Conte’s ‘different’ return and problem solving
This was Antonio Conte but not as we know him. He was back in the fold but it was a restricted version of the Italian.
The 53-year-old returned to the training pitches at Hotspur Way on Thursday morning after arriving back in the UK the previous day, a week after surgery in Italy to remove his gallbladder following worrying and severe abdominal pains.
On Saturday at The King Power Stadium, the madcap, emotional version of Conte was not able to appear. In the early moments of the match he sat on a drinks cooler while occasionally getting up and pointing. The travelling Spurs fans sang his name in the opening minutes and he applauded them from afar.
That was as animated as he really got, retiring to his seat on plenty of occasions with Stellini the dominant presence in the technical area.
“It’s good for all the club [to have him back],” said Stellini. “It’s good for the team, it’s good for everyone to have Antonio back. He has to take it easy a bit because he cannot use his energy 100%. We have to give something more to cover the gap because without Antonio that way we had more responsibility.
“We spoke before the game, during the game but Antonio feels the difference. He takes care of his health so he knows he has to be careful. He wants to be back because he’s our manager and with his passion he can transfer as well but he needs to be careful in this moment.”
After the game Conte did not say a word to his players, knowing the performance and scoreline said more than he ever could and that an angry, emotional rant would do his recovering body no favours.
“No [he did not speak to them afterwards], it’s better probably to speak tomorrow about this game,” said Stellini. “We have to recover the energy because we have an important game Tuesday against Milan, an important club in the Champions League. The history of this club is important so we have to play a great match.”
If Conte was hoping for a gentle return to life at Tottenham, the sudden and growing injury list has all but obliterated that hope.
The most worrying sight was that of Rodrigo Bentancur screaming in agony on the pitch as his concerned team-mates gathered around him, with Eric Dier at one point cradling the distressed 25-year-old’s head in his hand. The midfielder needed to take a breath on what seemed to be a cannister of oxygen as he was overwhelmed by the pain.
The Uruguayan’s leg had collided with Mendy’s but it was the motion of his foot being caught in the turf that resulted in his knee turning inward.
The immediate fear with a knee injury within Tottenham will be any kind of cruciate ligament damage and although Stellini took solace from Bentancur eventually getting up and not needing the stretcher that was brought to him, instead limping around the outside of the pitch, one only needs to look at Virgil van Dijk to have that positive thought tempered.
The Liverpool defender walked off after being clattered by a high Jordon Pickford challenge in the Merseyside derby and scans later revealed he had suffered anterior cruciate ligament damage and he was out for nine months.
“He feels pain at the moment,” Stellini told football.london of Bentancur. “We know only this but he can walk so it’s important to feel that he came back to the bench with his leg [injury] and we hope that we can check in a few days that Rodrigo can feel better and he play soon.”
Having Bentancur out for the long-term would be a huge loss for Conte and the team, who always look better when the composed midfielder plays. His goal on Saturday had made it five goals and two assists in 18 Premier League matches, with another strike in the Champions League.
Even losing the Uruguayan in the short term presents its own problems in tandem with Yves Bissouma’s injury. The Mali international has now undergone surgery on the stress fracture in his ankle and Conte will announce the timeframe of his recovery in his next press conference on Monday evening.
Stress fractures in the foot, including the ankle, can take anywhere between four and eight weeks to heal and more serious cases can take even longer. Including the time to get fit and sharp again after needing to keep weight off the ankle as it heals, such a scenario would see Bissouma out for much of the remainder of the season, which has 15 weeks to go.
Antonio Conte reacts to Tottenham’s 4-1 hammering against Leicester City on Saturday afternoon
On top of that, Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg is suspended for the match in Milan which presents the very real possibility of 20-year-old Pape Matar Sarr and 22-year-old Oliver Skipp having to pair up together in the midfield in a Champions League last 16 match.
The young duo’s only experience of playing alongside each other as a pair came somewhat unconvincingly in the FA Cup tie against League One side Portsmouth and this game in Italy will provide a far tougher challenge, despite Milan only achieving their first win since January 4 in Friday night’s 1-0 victory against Torino.
An alternative option for Conte could be a one-off return for Dier to the defensive midfield role he played to good effect alongside Mousa Dembele in his second and third seasons under Mauricio Pochettino before moving into central defence.
Stellini told football.london that Sarr and Skipp would be trusted if they get the nod in the San Siro.
“We trust a lot in our team, in all the squad. So if we need to play with other players we will play and trust in them,” he said. “It’s important to understand that it’s not one player who changes the team. If the team does something more we can cover the gap with players who haven’t in the past played a lot. If everyone takes responsibility, nothing changes.”
Then there is Sessegnon. football.london understands the 22-year-old has been left devastated by his latest hamstring injury suffered in training ahead of the Leicester match.
The young wing-back has lost 55 matches of his Spurs career to different hamstring problems in the past three and a half years. Sessegnon worked hard over the summer with a personal trainer in an attempt to try to prevent any further issues and he has been available for almost all of this campaign.
However, he was aided by the fixture calendar in picking up a hamstring injury in the Carabao Cup defeat at Nottingham Forest which meant he only missed the Leeds match before the World Cup break.
This latest hamstring problem though will see him miss at least six weeks of action, with a two week international break at the end of March the only respite.
It does not bode well for Sessegnon’s future at Tottenham. In Conte he has a manager who trusts him but being plagued by hamstring injuries so early in his career will sow seeds of doubt about his ability to be available for long periods of time.
The arrival of the talented 20-year-old Destiny Udogie in the summer from Udinese will also cause further issues for the England U21 international.
In the mean time, Conte will need to find alternatives to Perisic to rest the 34-year-old at key points and that could come in the shape of Ben Davies, or Emerson Royal switching flanks. The Spurs head coach’s previous go-to option was Matt Doherty but the Irishman left the club suddenly on transfer deadline day for Atletico Madrid on an unexpected free transfer.
Conte needs to find solutions through personnel and tactically and he will hope that this hammering at the King Power Stadium provokes a similar reaction to the defeat at Turf Moor last season, which sparked a run of form that ended with Spurs jumping into the top four in the final weeks.
If Bentancur’s absence is a long one then Tottenham will have lost two influential players in the midfielder and Lloris and Conte will need his other experienced heads to make their presence felt and galvanise the rest.
This Tottenham squad must decide whether injuries will define their season or whether certain players will step up when they are needed the most.
Source:
If Bentancur’s absence is a long one then Tottenham will have lost two influential players in the midfielder and Lloris and Conte will need his other experienced heads to make their presence felt and galvanise the rest.
This Tottenham squad must decide whether injuries will define their season or whether certain players will step up when they are needed the most.
