Last weekend Tottenham Hotspur lost the player they could least afford to lose to injury in striker Harry Kane. This weekend Spurs lost the currently active player they could least afford to lose in attacking midfielder Dele Alli. A bit if a rough patch could be ahead for the north London side.
Kane is out for approximately two months due to ankle ligament damage. As for Alli, well Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino was less than optimistic, and it seems like his hamstring issues have returned. “We need to assess ( Dele Alli ) in the next few days. It doesn’t look great,” Pochettino said.
?Mauricio on @dele_official.#COYS pic.twitter.com/6v7nqmlQra
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) January 20, 2019
“On the pitch, I think we all agree that when you see him put his hand on his hamstring it’s a situation where it’s not great to see that. It’s not a worry, it’s a massive opportunity for different players to play.”
“Like I told you with Harry Kane and now with Dele Alli, we hope it’s not a big issue but the most important thing is to believe,” Pochettino said after his team rallied to beat Fulham 2-1, getting the game winning goal via Harry Winks in injury time.
“We go there [to Chelsea] trying to win the game and go to the final.”
“Lucas Moura was training today at the training ground. He’s going to be okay. Today we didn’t want to take a risk with him but he’s nearly 100 percent to try to help the team.”
“Maybe it’s not going to be Dele Alli [at Chelsea], but we’re going to have Lucas Moura on the bench or maybe starting from the beginning. We’ll see how we’re going manage him now.”
With Son Heung-Min still away on international duty with South Korea in the Asian Cup, the team will have nothing short of a full blown availability crisis in the final third when they take on arch-rival Chelsea in the second leg of their EFL Cup semi-final tie on Thursday night.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, regularly appears as a guest pundit on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
He also contributes sociopolitical essays to Chicago Now. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. The content of his cat’s Instagram account is unquestionably superior to his.