Spurs: Conte must unleash Kulusevski

Tottenham Hotspur head into Saturday afternoon’s Premier League assembly towards Leicester Metropolis off the again of their first defeat of the 2022/23 marketing campaign, with Sporting Lisbon having emerged 2-0 winners over Spurs within the Champions League on Tuesday.

Whereas Tottenham’s efficiency in Portugal was removed from disastrous – with two late Sporting targets being sufficient to steal all three factors – it represented one more sport by which Son Heung-min struggled to search out kind.

Certainly, having drawn a clean in all eight of his appearances up to now this season – together with his solely aim contribution coming within the type of an help towards Southampton on the Premier League’s opening day – the winger has seemed removed from his finest in 2022/23.

This has led some to query whether or not the £67.5m-rated ahead needs to be dropped from Antonio Conte’s beginning XI this weekend, one thing that the 52-year-old addressed in his pre-match press conference forward of the Leicester sport.

The Spurs supervisor mentioned: “No gamers are undroppable. This needs to be clear. If I say this it’s solely to assist my gamers and to keep away from accidents, to attempt to have gamers in a superb efficiency. You realize you’ll be able to play one sport effectively, one other so-so and one other not. My job is to guard my gamers and discover the fitting solution to get a superb end result.

“For those who don’t begin with some gamers then you’ve got the chance to make use of them within the sport. If we need to play these 4 competitions, within the Europa Convention League it may possibly provide the chance to make rotations within the group stage and when you drop a little bit of the standard you’ll be able to possibly nonetheless win. Within the Champions League it’s completely different.”

Contemplating the truth that Dejan Kulusevski has begun every of Spurs’ final three video games on the bench, it could seem one thing of a should for Conte to lastly unleash the Swedish sensation rather than the misfiring Son this night.

Certainly, over his 18 Premier League appearances in 2021/22, the £45m-rated ahead was in outstanding kind, scoring 5 targets, offering eight assists and creating six massive possibilities, together with taking 1.4 photographs, making 1.4 key passes and finishing 1.4 dribbles per sport.

These returns noticed the £110k-per-week attacker common a merely sensational SofaScore match score of 7.21, not solely rating him as Spurs’ fourth-best performer within the league but additionally because the 25th-best participant in your complete high flight final time period.

It has been the same story for the participant who Raj Chohan dubbed “unreal” within the present marketing campaign, having already scored one aim, registered two assists and created one massive likelihood over his six league outings, along with taking 1.3 photographs, making 1.8 key passes and finishing one dribble per sport.

As such, whereas Son is undoubtedly an especially proficient participant who will finally return to kind, it’s clear to see that Conte merely should unleash Kulusevski within the South Korean’s place on the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this night, because the 22-year-old might effectively be a game-changer in Spurs’ assault.