Dejan Kulusevski blow makes this Postecoglou’s most painful Spurs injury crisis of all

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The whole Ange Postecoglou era at Tottenham Hotspur has been defined by injuries. Ever since the honeymoon period ended against Chelsea in November 2023, with Mickey van de Ven’s hamstring and James Maddison’s ankle, the overriding question has always been which players were out and when would they come back.

This season has been dominated by injuries like no other, with Spurs at their worst in January, having a whole team of players unavailable. Van de Ven and Cristian Romero, the two most integral players to the system, both missed almost four simultaneous months this season. The whole structure of the team effectively collapsed.

But just when it felt like Tottenham were over their injury crises, and had everyone back to rescue the season, they have been hit by the most painful one of them all. Over the course of the last two weeks, Spurs have lost all three of their best, most talented and creative midfielders. First, it was Lucas Bergvall, injuring his ankle in training the day before the first leg against Bodo/Glimt. Then Maddison hurt his knee during that first leg, the scans revealing an injury that ended his season.

And now, with everything resting on Dejan Kulusevski, he injured his knee after being tackled by Marc Guehi during Sunday’s game against Crystal Palace. On Wednesday afternoon, Tottenham confirmed that Kulusevski had required surgery. Like Maddison and Bergvall, his season is over.

At any time in any season, this would be a disaster. Maddison and Kulusevski are Spurs’ only consistently creative players. They are both senior players, leaders on and off the pitch, and they have shared the responsibility under Postecoglou to create chances for the front line. They have been comfortably Spurs’ two best players this season.

Kulusevski was untouchable for the first half of the season, flourishing after Postecoglou moved him from the right wing into the middle. By January, he started to look tired and then in February he suffered the stress fracture to his left foot that kept him out for a month. It was only because of the recovery from that injury, which left Kulusevski still needing minutes to build up his sharpness, that Kulusevski was playing against Palace at the weekend. He had looked in recent weeks as if he still needed time out on the pitch. Almost everyone else who had started against Bodo/Glimt — apart from Rodrigo Bentancur and Pedro Porro — was rested.

Maddison started the season slower, and struggled to put together a convincing run of games. But the sadness for him is that he was playing his best football right at the moment he got injured. That first leg against Glimt was Maddison’s seventh start out of eight games. He was looking sharp, confident and in control. No player had been more integral to Spurs’ progress towards Bilbao. If Kulusevski was the star of the first half of the season, Maddison had been the best of the second half.

Maddison and Bergvall have already been sidelined in recent weeks (Visionhaus/Getty Images)

And then there is Bergvall, the teenager who has looked more assured and more natural with every game he has played this season. Over the last six months, he has grown in front of our eyes, proving that he is a natural ball-winner and carrier, driving Spurs forward when nobody else would. He no longer looks like a Premier League newcomer. He has not done so for months.

To lose one of these three would be painful. To lose two would be worrying. To lose all three, just before Spurs’ biggest game in six years, well, it will be enough to have people asking if this would ever happen to a different club.

Everyone knows that Spurs have already beaten Manchester United three times this season. But in the 3-0 win at Old Trafford, they had Kulusevski and Maddison starting together in midfield, driving them forward, Kulusevski scoring the second goal. In the thrilling 4-3 win in the League Cup, both players started, excelled, and Kulusevski scored again. And in the scratchier 1-0 home league win, Maddison, Kulusevski and Bergvall all started, Maddison scoring the only goal.

Now, Postecoglou has to think about how to set up the team in Bilbao without any of them. It could be the question that will define the game that will, in turn, define his tenure: How can you play creative football without creative players?

The good news, in a sense, is that Postecoglou had a version of this question last week too. In the second leg against Bodo/Glimt, he did not have Bergvall or Maddison to choose from. So he went for a solid double pivot of Bentancur and Yves Bissouma, giving extra protection in front of the defence, just as they did in the first leg. Kulusevski was the 10, although in truth his biggest influence on the game was marking Patrick Berg rather than anything he did on the ball. Spurs did not have much of a midfield in Norway, so they bypassed it anyway, went direct and won at a canter.

Bentancur and Bissouma will surely start in Bilbao, the question is: who plays alongside them? The obvious answer would be Pape Matar Sarr, who has drifted in the rotated ‘B team’ in recent weeks but is almost always involved. He has not had a brilliant season but can provide energy and clever runs off the ball. Frankly, there are not a lot of other options, although it felt instructive that Wilson Odobert played as a 10 for the end of the Palace game. He played plenty of times there for Burnley last season. And if Spurs want someone who can run at centre-backs and commit them, he can do that unlike anyone else.

It is not a choice to get Spurs fans excited, one week out from a historical game. But it is the choice Postecoglou is left with, as he wrestles with this painful crisis before the night that will define his legacy. It might be that the best approach, as against Bodo/Glimt, is to dig in, stay compact, ignore the midfield and go long towards their physical frontline. It is not exactly Angeball. But it has worked in the last few European games. And it might be the only option they have left.

Top photo: Rob Newell/CameraSport/Getty Images

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