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  • 07/11/2023
Tottenham Hotspur: How will Spurs react to their first league defeat?
Transcript
00:00 As you mentioned there, injuries affecting Spurs quite badly.
00:03 Postacoglu takes some defeat for the first time in the league as Spurs manager.
00:08 Obviously this is the first little bump in the road.
00:11 How do you think the whole team will cope with the injuries,
00:15 the lack of players available and having a defeat?
00:18 Well, I don't think the character is in question.
00:21 I mean, we showed last night that we were still willing to give it a real good go with nine men.
00:27 So I'm confident we won't let our heads drop.
00:30 Tough game at Wolves, mind you, Saturday lunchtime.
00:32 That won't be easy, although I think they might be missing Neto and he's a huge player for them.
00:37 But I did say, and we have said several times,
00:40 we're going to face a bump in the road and this might well be it with the selection headaches that we're going to face now.
00:45 I mean, like I say, Dier will come in. He did very well last night.
00:48 I mean, he's sort of much maligned among a certain section of the fan base at Spurs,
00:52 but he was terrific last night when he came on.
00:54 To say he's hardly played any football this season, you know, fair play to him.
00:58 He showed a lot of character, a lot of heart and his ball-playing ability has never been questioned.
01:02 I think the pacing behind is a problem and that's where we're going to hugely miss Van der Veen with that high line.
01:09 The question is now for the next three games, who plays alongside Dier?
01:13 We're going to probably need Emerson, a left-back with Ben Davies not fit and Udovi suspended.
01:17 Do we look at Ash Phillips, who's coming from Blackburn?
01:20 I know he's got a big reputation,
01:22 but I think he's only got a handful of Championship appearances to his name, so that would be a big ask.
01:27 Do we look at a young lad in the Academy, Dorrington, who apparently is pulling up trees there?
01:33 But again, that's a huge step up for him.
01:35 Or do we sort of go with the safe route and try Heuberg at centre-back,
01:38 which would leave us very, very short in terms of pacing the back line.
01:42 So, you know, huge, huge selection problems going into the Wolves game.
01:48 Possibly another midfielder.
01:49 Perhaps do we bring Benton Kerr in to sort of try and play that holding role in front of the back four with Basuma as well?
01:56 And Sarr just pushing on a little bit to try and give a little bit of cover.
01:59 Who knows? That's going to be a big conundrum for Postacoglu this week.
02:03 But I think, you know, we said, didn't we, that we were still in the game and we were still giving Chelsea,
02:08 you know, more than a run for the money with nine men.
02:10 So we'll still be a threat.
02:12 We'll still play our football, but it'll be a huge, huge test of character now.
02:16 And, you know, the fact Wolves has a quick turnaround Saturday lunchtime, it'll be a hostile atmosphere there as well.
02:22 The one saving grace, we've got quite a good record at Wolves, actually.
02:25 So we're going to need to really bounce back.
02:27 And we're taking a lot out of the nine men last night.
02:30 We did an awful lot of running and, you know, chasing the ball, to be honest.
02:32 So, yeah, it's going to be a tough few days for Spurs.
02:36 But let's hope we get some positive news, certainly on Madison anyway.
02:38 And, you know, fingers crossed Van der Ven's not as serious as it looked.
02:42 I think there was rumours he left the ground on crutches last night, which doesn't suggest that's looking good at all.
02:48 But we do have an international break at Lulee, which might well just come at a good time just to try and get a couple of the injured bodies back.

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