There’s a lot to talk about coming out of Sunday’s 4-3 Tottenham Hotspur loss to Chelsea, but let’s stick with the injury situation for a second. Ange Postecoglou sprung a happy surprise on Spurs fans when Tottenham’s starting lineup featured the return of both Cuti Romero and Micky van de Ven. Unfortunately, neither lasted the full 90. Van de Ven was a second half sub and while his injury wasn’t disclosed it looked like he felt something in his legs. Brennan Johnson made it 53 minutes before he came off looking distressed.
But the worst injury sub was Cuti Romero, who lasted only 15 minutes before he was withdrawn for Radu Dragusin (who played quite well, it should be said). While Postecoglou caught a lot of flack from Spurs fans on social media for apparently “taking chances” with the health and recovery of his starting CBs, Ange said of the three injury subs, one was planned, one was due to illness, and the third — Cuti — was a brand new injury unrelated to the one from which he recently recovered.
“Romero is just obviously hugely disappointing. He felt something in his quad. He trained really well. He wasn’t the one I was worried about, to be honest, but, you know, it’s just like I said, the way the season’s going for us unfortunately. So we just have to wait and see.
“Brennan just didn’t feel well. He didn’t feel well at half-time, but he wanted to give it a go, but he just wasn’t feeling 100% so I had to take him off.
“And then, well, the plan was always for Micky to play 60/70 [minutes] today. Obviously, I thought Romero would be okay to play 90, but Micky, probably 60/70. So we were always going take him off. He didn’t feel anything significant. He just felt tightness, but we were always going to take him off anyway.
“Romero didn’t injure the same thing. It’s a totally different injury, but also people I’m sure are aware of our situation. It’s not like I’ve got a multitude of options there, so, you know, you’ve got to make these decisions. Both players trained and tried well, and they both wanted to help.
“So you make these decisions with all the best information. Like I said, it’s not like Romero re-injured his toe, it’s a totally different injury, which could happen at any time.”
The other talking point was the awful tackle by Chelsea’s Moises Caicedo on Pape Matar Sarr. On replay, the incident was almost certainly red card worthy (to go along with a couple of other nasty uncalled and yellow-card worthy challenges) but both the official and VAR declined to intervene. When asked about the incident, Postecoglou took the opportunity to make another subtle criticism about both VAR and the state of officiating in the Premier League.
“I think it’s kind of where we’re at with the current state of football, where people are just frozen to make big decisions. I think referees don’t want to make them because they’ll go to VAR and VAR doesn’t want to intervene, so you’re kind of left in no man’s land. There’s a couple of decisions I thought today that definitely went against us.
“I thought the linesman put his flag up bizarrely for Deki when he was through, I don’t know what for. Those are things that are out of our control. We can’t do anything about that. Hopefully the powers that be work that out.
“Yeah [the Caicedo tackle was] what I was talking about. But like I said that is where we are at. I just don’t think, I have said it before, the technology has helped our game. I don’t see how it helps because It means instead of one person being in control of a game and you accepting that it almost feels like no one is in control because everybody is scared to make a decision to overturn somebody else. Referees are scared to make decisions in case they get it wrong, VAR don’t want to intervene and I get that because you don’t want disruptions to the game. You just have to cop out.”
The loss was a particularly dispiriting one due to the fact that Spurs went up 2-0 early behind some gorgeous play, only to let Chelsea back into the match en route to giving up two silly penalties. That said, Postecoglou denied that the players are disheartened or losing faith in the project, but acknowledged that the squad is hurting, exhausted, and injured — all things that add a significant amount of challenge during a hectic and congested period.
“I don’t sense anybody is feeling sorry for themselves. 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 doesn’t allow us to do that so you have to find other ways. 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 us between now and January just to make sure we keep performing. 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 death march of fixtures continues for Spurs this Thursday, when they travel to Glasgow to face Rangers in the Europa League. Spurs then travel to cellar-dwellers Southampton next Sunday.
