Perhaps the most ominous moment of Tottenham Hotspur’s 4-3 home defeat against Chelsea on Sunday was when Micky van de Ven went down clutching the back of his right leg in the 78th minute.
The Dutch defender, making his first appearance in over a month after recovering from a hamstring injury, looked in real discomfort. The club’s medical staff rushed onto the pitch and helped him stretch that leg out, but he had to be replaced by Archie Gray. Head coach Ange Postecoglou said Van de Ven “didn’t feel anything significant, just tightness”, but for Spurs fans, it will be hard not to be pessimistic.
Van de Ven completed a hat-trick of players Tottenham lost to injury or illness during the game, turning a bad result into a disaster which leaves them in a perilous position.
Fellow defender Cristian Romero only lasted 15 minutes on his first start since the home loss to Ipswich Town on November 10. Romero missed four club games in all competitions with a toe injury suffered on international duty last month but had to be replaced with Radu Dragusin yesterday after feeling pain in his thigh. Winger Brennan Johnson came off early in the second half because he “didn’t feel well”, according to Postecoglou.
Tottenham now appear to have one fit recognised centre-back for Thursday’s Europa League tie with Rangers in Glasgow. Guglielmo Vicario, their first-choice goalkeeper, is also out for months with a fractured ankle.
By the end of the Chelsea game, Timo Werner and Son Heung-min were the only wingers available. Striker Dominic Solanke is backed up by the promising but raw 19-year-old Will Lankshear, who has played just a handful of minutes in a single Premier League appearance, while Richarlison (hamstring) recovers from his latest injury.
Anybody who is expecting a quick fix to Tottenham’s current problems — they have lost three of their past five Premier League fixtures, winning once, and sit 11th — needs to realise the situation will probably get worse before it gets better.
Their squad has been severely impacted by injuries. The consequences of this are that the workloads of those players who are fit will increase, so the chances of them also ending up in the treatment room increase, too — which is exactly what happened with Ben Davies in the midweek 1-0 loss to Bournemouth. It is a vicious cycle which will not be helped by the Rangers trip kicking off a run of six games in 18 days across three competitions.
“It is a tough moment because there are all these tools you can possibly use as a manager when you are going through tough moments to turn things around and our limited resources from a playing perspective at the moment don’t allow us to do that, so you have to find other ways,” Postecoglou said in his press conference after the Chelsea defeat.
“It’s not through a lack of effort. The players are constantly out there because we can’t rotate. They are giving everything they can. It diminishes performances as well because they probably need a rest but we can’t give them a rest. I think it is something we need to tackle head-on and keep pushing on.
“There is still plenty to play for between now and January. I still sense within this squad there is a real conviction in what we are doing and if we maintain that, we will turn our season around and hopefully at some point we hit some smoother waters in terms of some of the things that are happening at the moment. Some of it is self-inflicted and hopefully we can get some more consistency.”
The frustration is only exacerbated by the inevitability that tired minds and bodies will lead to poor decision-making.
There was an example of this in the 60th minute yesterday, just before Cole Palmer made it 2-2 from the penalty spot. Yves Bissouma was dispossessed on the halfway line by Pedro Neto and, in his desperation to atone for that error, lunged into a reckless tackle on Moises Caicedo in the box. In Bissouma’s defence, he is currently expected to play every top-flight game in the holding midfield role while Rodrigo Bentancur serves a seven-match domestic ban for racist comments he made about team-mate Son.
It was a similar situation some 20 minutes later with Pape Sarr, who brought down Palmer for the penalty that became the final Chelsea goal, even though the England international was heading out of the area and away from immediate danger. Including yesterday, Sarr has started five games in 16 days.
Jadon Sancho’s opener for the visitors, halving Spurs’ early lead, came down the left wing a couple of minutes after Dragusin was rushed off the bench for Romero and the team were readjusting to the change in personnel. It underlines how all of these issues are linked.
Over the past 18 months, Tottenham have switched their focus in the transfer market to signing talented players under the age of 23. They have lost a lot of experienced senior players including Harry Kane, Hugo Lloris, Eric Dier and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg. In the summer, they spent a club-record fee of £65million to buy Solanke, who turned 27 in September, from Bournemouth, but their other signings — Gray, Wilson Odobert, Lucas Bergvall and Yang Min-hyeok, who officially arrives from South Korean side Gangwon next month — were all teenagers.
It means that at a time when their squad is stretched, they are relying on Bergvall and Gray to step up. It is not an ideal scenario to place that much pressure on two teenagers to help you grind out results or produce match-winning moments. Chelsea coach Enzo Maresca had the luxury of sending on over £150million worth of talent in Joao Felix, Christopher Nkunku, Noni Madueke, Renato Veiga and Malo Gusto from the bench yesterday. It is not a surprise the visitors were the superior side in the second half and that Spurs could not maintain the same levels of intensity.
There are legitimate questions to be asked about some of Postecoglou’s decisions, including starting Van de Ven and Romero yesterday, but Tottenham are desperately out of luck. “Every time we have seemed like we are on solid footing, something has come along which will become an impediment for us to do that,” Postecoglou said. “It’s just the way our season has gone so far.”
Do not expect things to become any easier.
Spurs might suffer a few more disappointing results while they wait for key players to return and with the pressure mounting, Postecoglou has to hope he is given the time to oversee the upswing.
(Top photo: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
