Spurs' squad is creaking
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The Athletic FC Podcast Network.

Hello everybody and welcome once again to the View from the Lane, the multi-award winning Tottenham Hotspur podcast from The Athletic. And joining me, your host Danny Kelly. Today are The Athletic's Jack Pitbrook and Jay Harris. A second home draw on the bounce for Spurs. I'll start with you, Jack. Jack and Jay were both in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. I watched the game for clarity on a very large television. What do we make of this, Jack? Should I back my...

feelings of unhappiness about the only drawing with Fulham because of the injury crisis that Spurs are suffering.

Yeah, I think you can't separate what we saw from the injury crisis. I thought Spurs were pretty bad. I thought Fulham were the better team. They should have won. To me, Spurs looked flat. They barely really created anything, I thought. And Fulham created quite a lot. Clearly, you can't separate this, A, from the injury crisis...

and B, the schedule. They had a tiring game against Roma on Thursday, a game where Pastor Coghlu went a bit stronger than I thought he would. But then they lost Solanke, on top of everything else, they lost Solanke to an illness, they benched Kulosevski, and they didn't really, they really, really struggled to get going. And I guess the worrying thing is that Spurs are playing every Thursday and every Sunday this month, and they've got a lot of injuries,

And, you know, Solanke might be back on Thursday. I think Romero will come back soonish. He's not got a bad injury. But I just think that the schedule and the injuries will make it difficult for them to produce their top physical level this month. What did you make of it, Jay? Well, I just watched the highlights back on Match of the Day. And I remember Fulham creating a lot of chances there.

But I didn't quite remember just how many saves Forster had to make. I think one of his first interventions is when Jimenez sort of chests it in the box and nearly scores and he comes out. He has that save from Jimenez's volley, the D-up header, the Awobi shot. The Awobi shot that hits the bar, I think Forster just about gets his fingertips to it. And there were really not many times where...

Tottenham threatened. It could have been a completely different game if Son scores in the first 30 seconds when Bassi makes that poor pass. And I think Postacogli referenced that after the game that they sort of should have started better and capitalised. But I agree with everything Jack said. It was really flat. And 10 minutes into the game, it felt very similar to the Crystal Palace game. Just in a sense of, I didn't ever feel like Tottenham were going down.

to hit second, third, fourth gear. So I felt that quite early on. Yeah, and it's not an infallible rule, but one of Kelly's rules of watching Spurs is that you can usually tell in the first 10 minutes how it's going to go. Now, of course, that's been derided many, many times. But again, they...

Once Son missed, you thought Fulham were in the game very, very quickly. We'll have an argument later on, no doubt, and people were arguing hugely on social media about, well, what is this squad then? But Spurs really were. If you think about Vicario not playing, both the centre-backs being out, arguably their best number six in Benton Curve for different reasons, of course, self-inflicted, Kulishevsky having to be rested, and then

and Solanke not playing, that's the whole middle of the team. That's all the centre of the team gone from, you know, would have been the starters. And it is a cliche now to mention it because people already said it elsewhere, but on the bench Spurs had two players who'd started a Premier League game. Two. One of those was Sergio Reguilón,

who hasn't started since sometime in time. No doubt, Jack will tell me exactly. April 2022, yeah. So basically, the seven... This was the really striking thing to me, was that Tottenham are a richer team than Fulham, and you would expect them to have better players available to them.

But on the bench, Tottenham had seven substitutes who had never started a Premier League game between them. Austin, Bergvall, Spence, Gray, Lancashire, Olaseisi and Williams-Barnett. That is amazing. You might well say, well, Spence has played a lot of football to various levels, which is true, and Gray's proven in the Championship, and maybe Spence and Gray should have played some Premier League games this season, but they haven't. And so Spurs really only had one established...

substitute really in Kulosevsky. Whereas Fulham, this is a team who have to sell their, they've lost what, five players in the summer? They have to sell quite a lot. They've had to sell Mitrovic, they had to sell Polinia, they lost Tosin in the summer, they lost Cordova-Reed, they lost Willian.

And yet Fulham came into this game with, I think, a much stronger bench. You know, Fulham had Wilson who came on and changed the game, Kearney who came on and changed the game, Adama Traore who is a game, like an absolute game changer. They had Rodrigo Menees who was really good last season. They had Sessegnon who's obviously had his problems but, you know, has played a fair bit at this level.

So in that alone, and they had Timothy Castagne, who's an established Belgian international who's played a lot of Premier League football. So Fulham had far, far more experience on their bench than Spurs did.

And I know, you know, we all know why that is. It's because Spurs are missing seven players. And there have been moments this season where Spurs have had a really good bench. You know, Posse Coghlu said afterwards, like, look, you know, remember in the City game when I could bring on Werner and Johnson to great effect, whereas today Werner and Johnson had to start because they didn't really have anybody else.

But it just shows you how Spurs' squad, even though it looked very good at the start of the season, now they're in this injury crisis. All of a sudden, all that depth has gone. Do we know...

what was said about Solanke has all been couched in very general terms in press conferences. He turned up, he didn't look very nice, we sent him home. Do we know what it is that he's suffering from? No, that's the extent of it. Like you said, Postacoglu mentioned that Solanke was sort of in the team, turned up to the game, didn't look well, so they sent him home. But he was also asked on Friday, after the two-all draw with Roma, how Solanke was feeling. And

And I think Zelenki sort of looked like he was struggling a little bit with fatigue towards the end of that game. Postakoglu said he was sore, but sort of shot it down. So as you were, obviously conspiracy theories and whispers and rumours, etc. And Postakoglu did speak to the media on Friday before training. But I believe it does just sound like he had a little bit of an illness and Postakoglu is weighing up.

If I play him today and he's not particularly effective, I'm only going to make the situation worse. Can we cut without him for one game? We should be able to. Obviously, they didn't to varying degrees. But I think I'd be surprised if he wasn't back for Thursday. Yeah, I mean, I only asked the question. Neither of you two, bless you to my knowledge, are doctors. I asked the question because what Spurs can't afford now is for some kind of bug to go through what's left of the squad. Yeah.

Otherwise, these young lads on the bench, who I can't pretend to have ever seen play in two cases, will find themselves near the first team. Of course, Solanke was... They're all losses, of course, but we'll come on to the fact that the centre-backs, again, cover themselves in a reasonable amount of, if not glory, certainly they played well. The loss of Solanke, Jack, just meant the Spurs were...

Son's chance in the first minute, notwithstanding, they just look so clunky again in attack. I'm not blaming just the front three, because the midfielders have got to get the ball to them all the rest of it. Spurs just never got going. Yeah, I mean, Solanke is so integral to how Tottenham play, even aside from the goals that he's scored. It's his ability, one, I mean, he's brilliant at pressing, and two, his ability to keep hold of the ball in the opposition half.

So, you know, hold it up, bring other players into play is so good. And Son just can't do that. Like he just can't. There's a reason why this is, I think, only the second time that Son started through the middle this season. And the first was the second game of the season when Solanke wasn't fully ready yet.

And I just think Son... There were so many times that me and Jay were saying to each other during the game where they'd play the ball forward to Son and Son would try and take it on the half turn and he'd just run straight into a defender. You know, whether it was Bassi or Tete or whoever or Diop and the ball would come straight back and...

Tottenham being unable... It meant that really Tottenham were only able to do anything either on the break, like their goal, or from set pieces. You know, like the Madison free kick at the end of the first half, for example, or the drag us in header that went close from a corner. And also, like, Kulosevsky is also one of the few players who can keep the ball in the opposition half. He didn't come on until the second half. And so Spurs just weren't able to...

to build up properly. They weren't able to keep the ball in Fulham's half and create chances and go from there. And so they need Solanke. And the other player who could do this, of course, is Richarlison, who's out with a long-term hamstring injury. Like, Richarlison can hold up the ball, but he's got a bad injury at the moment too. So Spurs just can't, like, the ball just won't stick. Firstly, when Kulosevsky did come on, he went as a false nine anyways. So you're not even putting him in the position where he's had the most...

He's done so well, yeah.

that you sell him for 50, 60 million or however much they wanted him for and reinvest that in a 22-year-old, 23-year-old younger striker who could play second fiddle to Solanke, that is going to play week in, week out because the Roma game, this game, they're all examples where having a higher quality backup striker would have done Spurs a massive favour because what's going to happen over the next month is that Solanke is going to have to play far too often

When he doesn't play and Son goes up as the nine, nothing works, nothing clicks. You need Richarlison, but I think just during his time at Spurs, he's just never been consistently available. And, you know, what's the best quality availability or what's the best ability availability? That's the phrase I'm looking for. And unfortunately, he's just never available. And I think you can probably say that it's an investment that's...

that's not worked out so I'm sure that will still be interesting in next summer but you probably won't get the amount of money that you would have got the summer just gone but I don't know if you guys agree but it feels like it's probably reaching a point where the Richarlison experiment I think we can probably say it's not going to work out or it certainly on current evidence looks like it will never pay off.

Yeah, I agree with that 100%. I think that it would have been much, much, much better for Tottenham if Richarlison had gone to Saudi Arabia. I respect why he didn't want to go, but I think that was an opportunity for Tottenham to make their money back. They paid an initial £50m for Richarlison. In two and a half seasons, he scored 12 Premier League goals for Spurs. It has not worked. And I know he had a good spell last season, but...

for that much money you want more goals and you also want more availability it's like Jay says Richarlison's problem now is that he's basically it's a bit like Lo Celso's problem over the last few years which is that the guy who's basically a backup you can't really rely on him in a backup because he's injured half the time

And Tottenham do need a backup number nine. But I think it would have been much, much better if they'd got their money back on Richarlison and then bought somebody who they could probably count on a bit more. And, you know, everybody likes Richarlison as a person. Everybody admires what a good player he is when he's on it. But...

you know now is kind of when they need him and he's not available i'm afraid i look we've given i think it's we've given spurs a fair um hearing with regards to the problems of you know who they could select let's talk about the players that did select because you know it was it was a poor performance as you said jack um and fulham would have been if they'd won the game no none of us would have been complaining there were all kinds of things going on um

First of all, you wrote a piece, Jay, in the run-up to the game about the possibility of Archie Gray starting in midfield. Now, look, that didn't happen, but the midfield was back to the kind of disjointed position

sort of guessing game that we had at various points earlier in the season where Madison just couldn't find the things he needs to do to unlock defences and defended in a way that left Sarr and Basuma who were equally inaccurate with their passing marking three they were running throughout the midfield didn't work at all did it? Completely agree with what you said about

Sar and Basuma having quite a lot of passes that were wayward and were intercepted. And I think the best example with Basuma was actually in the build-up to Jimenez's volley. Because I think he's sort of playing with it quite near the corner flag and Smith-Rowe sort of chasing him. And it eventually gets intercepted. The Wobbe chips it into the box and Forster makes a brilliant save. But I remember saying this, I think after the Leicester game.

that it was really encouraging to see the way Maddison and Solanke linked up. And I remember sort of saying, maybe some of the reasons, or part of the reason why Maddison sort of tailed off towards the second end of last season, is because he didn't have the type of striker he needs to flourish, playing with him week in, week out. One week it was Son, then it was Richarlison, then it was Werner. And I think yesterday is the type of game where

You know what Madison likes to do, likes to hold on to the ball, draw defenders in and then sort of ping it to the striker who's going to hold it up and spin the doggies on. Everybody's going to run off them. But as Jack has already said, Son doesn't hold up the ball like that. So very quickly, Madison's options are quite limited. And then the team gets stunted. The passes aren't really going forward. And it just looks a little bit...

Not even a little bit. There's just creativity lacking, but that's sort of because of the impact taking Solanke out of that team has. You sort of need that focal point that knits everything together. So yeah, the midfield didn't have...

their greatest game, but the entire team didn't. And yeah, I think it just underlines how important Solanke is to this team. The game could have changed, as you said, in the first 25 seconds. And I think, you know, he is a legend. He is a Spurs hero. But you have to talk about the evidence with your own eyes. And Jack, Son Heung-min would have taken that chance many times in the last 10 years in his sleep.

And I don't know whether, and he's a streak player. Let's be truthful about Son. He'll go six, seven games not looking great. Then he'll get seven goals in five. But of course, once people get to a certain, I dare say, age, people are starting to look at your performance through a different set of spectacles. It's just a fact of life. And he had another one who had a poor, poor game, albeit in a position that he doesn't enjoy.

Yeah, I mean, he's not having a good season. I think he's looking more like the Son of two seasons ago, of 22-23. He came back last season and was good again, but he's got three Premier League goals in ten Premier League starters this season. That is not the Son that we know and love.

I think he looks to me like he doesn't quite have his normal sharpness. I mean, even aside from that first chance, which after about 45 seconds or so, 50 seconds, there was another one where he sort of took advantage of a poor back pass and

and tried to take it around Leno, he kind of tried to take it around Leno and then he tried to flick it back to, was it Johnson? He tried to flick it back to and then he ended up, he kind of got the flick wrong and Leno gathered the ball. I remember just thinking, like, classic Son would have just buried that. Like, he would have got his feet sorted so quickly and just fired off a shot within a split second.

But it's just not really happening for him at the moment. And it's a problem because, of course, he's been such a fantastic player. I think Tottenham have always been very reliant, as you would be, on his goals as well as Kane's goals. And now this guy who, for years, was one of the best finishers in the world, really...

is not finishing like he used to and that suddenly creates a bit of a deficit I think. Yeah some of that deficit is being filled by Brennan Johnson and you can I'm working up to something here as you can probably imagine you're being manipulated into a point of view Brennan Johnson and he got another lovely finish let's be honest those are not the easiest things coming down like they look easy for professional footballers but they have

to be converted. That's his 10th goal this season. And I remember at the start of the season when I was allowing myself a few doubts about Johnson the previous season, when our colleague James Moore said to me, well, if he gets 10 goals and five assists, will that be a good season? He's already got 10 goals. The question is, Jay, and this is mad considering how difficult it is to score goals in football, is what else did Brennan do on the day?

Yeah, but yes, the viaducts. Yes, the legal system and the wine. What else did he do for us on the day? So our colleague Liam Tharm actually wrote about this after the Roma game when he scored, basically saying that Johnson, my memory of Johnson when he was at Nottingham Forest was someone who played on the right wing, dribbled past defenders, would just knock it past and run, whip crosses into the box. And I don't see him do that as much.

for Tottenham. He's become a player who arrives at the back post and scores and does it very well. But I agree, there are times where in possession, don't even know if it's looked the most confident. It doesn't look the most assured, doesn't look the most calm when the ball's at his feet. And probably the perfect example of that

It's what happened in the game against Roma on Thursday when Postakoglu shouted at him for passing it backwards. There's just something about the way that Johnson plays where sometimes he's not always on the front foot. But having said that, his job is to arrive at the back post and score goals. And on another day...

If Kearney doesn't score that equaliser, we're saying, well, Johnson was exactly where he needed to be at the right time to get Spurs a 1-0 win. So understand what you're saying, but he scored five times in the Premier League last season. He's already scored six times.

this time around. So he is contributing. So he must be, is he the team's top scorer in the Premier League? Must be. Well, I think, has he got five or six, Johnson? I think I looked it up last night. He's got six. Then he's overtaken Madison, who had five. There you go. Yeah. There you go. So I understand what you're saying, but for the time being, top scorer, he has to play. It's weird. I kind of thought, I always assumed that if he started scoring, that would bring up a level of confidence in his game, which means that we'd see more of him

running with the ball, taking people on, doing that stuff which we haven't seen him do that much. And this season, he's scoring a lot, but I still feel like there should be a lot more to come from him. Those goals haven't led to him looking like a completely different man on the ball, taking on the full-back, wanting the ball. I still feel like there's probably a few extra levels to come out of him. MUSIC

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Church's fans keep it real, and we've got to reward that. Church's real rewards makes it real easy to save real coin, real fast, like in real time. Get a free two-piece chicken or three-piece tenders with your first purchase when you sign up. Welcome back to The View from the Lane. Jay Harris, Jack Pitbrook, and me, Danny Kelly. Look, it wasn't a very high bar, but Werner's

Vernon made the chance for Son in the first minute, and then he... That was a beautiful chip. And if that had been James Madison for Spurs' goal, not the winner, it turns out, for the goal for Johnson, we'd have been all saying, wow, what a player, and all the rest of it. What I'm working up to here, guys, is when the game was still in the balance in the last 20 minutes...

either side of the sending off of Kearney. Spurs' substitutes, I mean, I know he had limited choice of what to do. What did you make of them? Because at least one of our colleagues in the WhatsApp group said, I just don't get these at all. Anybody, Jack, I'll put you out the front of this. I thought it was a bit strange, given that Kearney had just been sent off.

I know that I guess the thinking would have been well they need more energy in midfield Madison and Sar I mean Madison Sar has played a ton a lot recently Madison has also played a fair bit in the last few weeks maybe it would make sense to get on some extra energy in the form of Berg, Val and Gray

I don't actually think in practice they did add any extra energy. They were both very tidy on the ball. But those last 10 minutes, Tottenham just passed from side to side in front of Fulham. They did nothing. Truthfully, they did nothing, didn't they? Fulham just sat in in their defensive shape. Tottenham passed the ball from side to side in front of them. And then the final whistle blew.

So I don't feel like those, and you know, it's not like he had Richarlison, Odebeer, Mikey Moore, who we haven't mentioned yet, on the bench, who could maybe have come on and been a bit more dynamic, but they, yeah, it really showed up, I think, the lack of options. My slight counterpoint to that would be, you know, in the summer, we were watching and seeing and hearing all these good things about Graham Bergvall and neither of them have started in the Premier League yet. And

I sort of alluded to it earlier. Poro has this really awkward slip towards the end of the first half and, you know, he was limping. And I don't think he looked quite right afterwards. And he's played a lot of games this season as well. And I remember just before Johnson scored, there was a sequence of play where Poro was struggling to keep up with Tottenham's attack and then Fulham countered and he struggled to get back into position. And I thought, like, this is a prime opportunity to bring on Gray or Spence and

for Poro and get a little bit more energy on the right wing, especially because, as Danny's already mentioned, Anthony Robinson is a really, really good attacking outlet for Fulham and just sort of combat that a little bit. So I agree that the sort of midfield substitutions didn't quite make sense and didn't really change the game. But then it's also difficult to tell a player, right, you've got, I think it was the 84th minute Kearney got sent off. You've got 15 minutes at a push to change the game and

Fulham are obviously just going to waste as much time as possible. So how much the ball is actually in play for that period of time is probably incredibly low. He spent a lot of time underneath Leno's chest, I know that. Exactly. But I think the change he should have made was to take off Poro for Spence or Gray. Particularly with Spence because...

in a game against Coventry City earlier this season he did offer something a little bit different in the attacking third that might have helped this team and given them made them slightly less predictable I think there's a big problem I think Jay's landed on a really big issue here which is that

They are so dependent on Adogge and Poro. Those two guys have started every single league game this season. I think they will now be ahead of Vicario as the Spurs players with the most Premier League minutes. I think Poro's been on the field for all but about four minutes this season.

And they're just really, really, really reliant on them. I think because they're the only... It's not technical. I think it's physical. It's because they've got the physicality to keep making those runs time after time after time. But I just think... I mean, I don't think they will be able to do that this month when Spurs are playing Thursday, Sunday every single week. And I think they have to start using...

and I mean they can't really use Davis who's playing centre back at the moment but they have to start using Gray and Spence more

If the manager doesn't trust Gray and Spence to play as a full-back in the Premier League in his system, then I think Spurs are in a bit of trouble because Poro and Adogu are not going to go on forever. And frankly, Poro didn't look anywhere near 100% after that nasty fall he had in the first half yesterday. And yeah, he stayed on and it just kind of blunted them. You can imagine a situation where Adogu and Poro start against Bournemouth and Chelsea, but that is not ideal. So...

You would like to see one of them

not start against Bournemouth, I think. And so there's at least a little bit of added refreshness on Sunday. But then I guess Postacoglu's maybe looking at it thinking, I'm already without two of my first choice back five, if you include Vicario. I don't know if I'm prepared to take out another one. So I do also to get it from that perspective as well. You mentioned before Archie Gray. What do you think about his deployment so far this season, Jay? To give everybody a little bit of context,

We wrote about it at the time and I sort of wrote about it again this weekend, but a big part of the negotiations between Graham Brentford and Graham Tottenham when he was making that choice was about where he would play and his favourite position is central midfield. And Brentford gave him a pitch saying, we'll play you as a number eight and then we'll develop you into a number six. This is all...

In the piece I've written for The Athletic, if anybody wants to check the whole thing out. And Tottenham also said, you know, we mainly see you as a midfielder. He joins the Tottenham project. And now I'm not saying he's never going to play in midfield. He did for 10 minutes yesterday. But we've just rarely seen him in that role. You know, he started at centre-back, he started at left-back, he started at right-back. And look, to a degree, that's great for his...

It presents him with different challenges. You know, he's come up against a lot of tricky wingers and that will improve his 1v1 defending, for example. And I know £40 million and an 18-year-old is a lot of money and, you know, cover your ears, but you're buying potential. But if you're investing £40 million into the squad on a player who you think can play in centre midfield, you probably should at some point.

give him an opportunity to play there. And we just haven't seen that yet. And so I'd like to see, at some stage, him given more than 10 minutes to play in centre midfield. Yeah, it is hard to inject...

18-year-olds into a team that's inconsistent, sometimes plays brilliantly, sometimes plays quite stodgily. And what about the situation with Spence then, Jack? Because it was clear to the eyeballs that Poro was not at his best and may have been struggling a little bit physically, and who could blame him, the amount of football he plays. Spence has got a new contract, been reintegrated into the squad recently,

But now, if he was ever going to come on and play, it would have been on Sunday. Yeah, it's weird, isn't it? I think we all got, maybe we all got a bit too wrapped up in the Jed Spence redemption arc at the start of the season when he came back and he starts to be involved again because he's not really, I mean, he's not really played that much at all, has he? Virtually nothing. Against City the other week,

He came on in the 89th minute. That was his first appearance for two months. When they won at Manchester United in September, he came on at half-time, to be fair to him, in that game. So that's not a bad run out. Before then, at Coventry City, he came on at half-time. And, of course, he scored that really, really big equaliser, which was a fantastic goal. And then at the start of the season, he had, what, 17 minutes when they beat Everton. And then the first day of the season, he had, what,

one minute at Leicester. So he has had two halves of football, but really it's not, you know, Spurs have had a lot of games this season and I thought we would see more of him. And it's not, you know, he's kind of stuck in the same, it's not, he's not in a radically different situation than he was under Conte. If he's going to be at the club, then they should maybe play him in more of the games. He has had a groin injury, which made him miss a few games, but also it just makes it,

the decision to give him a new contract looks slightly strange because his contract was running out in 2027 anyways so you had a two and a half year buffer whereas if it was expiring in 2026 and they're thinking okay we get to next summer he's only got a year left let's protect the asset and give him an extra couple of years I'd understand that a little bit more but it was already two and a half years off his contract expiring so you don't really need to worry about it for a while and

It probably has given him a little bit of false hope. It's given the fan base a little bit of false hope. And like Jack said, nothing's really actually changed for him. He's in this bizarre situation where he comes on, completely changes what was heading towards a really toxic defeat at Coventry City. And he's had less than, what, 60 minutes of game time since then. It's quite strange.

Yeah, there is a knock on with this as well, isn't it? That if you have players in the squad, because you have to name who are the squad, don't you? I never understood quite why that was the case. It didn't used to happen, but there you are. If you have players...

Gray is not trusted to play in midfield. Bergvall is clearly not thought to be good enough to start. And these are players who are developing. I get that. Jed Spencer, of course, is not a young man anymore. He should be heading towards his prime, but he's not trusted. They're taking up spaces in the squad, obviously.

And so, you know, you're going to get an argument about the injuries that Spurs have sustained and the suspension, of course. Does it illustrate terrible planning of the squad? Or is it just that sometimes football seasons, you get overwhelmed by events? I think they've been unlucky. I think that, you know, they...

People will often look at the injuries and say these are injuries connected to how they're trying to go about things. But I think Vicario breaking his ankle, that's quite a random injury really. Romero trying to put in a pretty hefty tackle, I think it was Morgan Rogers, and hurting his foot in the process, that's not a muscle injury. Yeah.

So Benton Kerr is obviously a separate thing, which is his own fault, but obviously Tottenham pay the price for as a club. You know, illnesses again is kind of uncontrollable, I think, in the case of Moore and now Solanke.

So yeah, they have been a bit unlucky, but equally, I think that the squad, like I said at the start, the depth that the squad appeared to have at the start of the season has now gone. And frankly, I think that

Assessments of the depth at the start of the season were probably based on the idea that Spence, Berg, Val and Gray were deemed to be Premier League ready. It doesn't actually seem like the manager feels that way. Let's end this section by asking, deep breath, when are any of these players coming back? Can we assume that Solanke has got a sniffle and will be back probably Thursday, if not in the weekend? I asked Postacoglu about this after the game yesterday.

about whether or not Solanke would be ready for Bournemouth. And he said, quote, I hope so. It's obviously an illness, not an injury. So we need to see how it settles down in the next couple of days. But hopefully it's nothing too significant. So yeah, my guess is he should be okay. I think Romero, so Romero hasn't trained yet. And I imagine that their priority would be getting him ready for Chelsea. That's my guess.

Van de Ven is running again, but not with the group. Is that right? So I think with Romero and Van de Ven, what Ange said was that they were still working with the sports science staff and neither of them was training with the full team yet. So while they might be out running and doing quite basic drills, they're not with their teammates yet. MUSIC

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Welcome back to The View from the Lane. Look, much more happy event in Spurs' world happened during the FA Cup second round game where Orient played Oldham. Josh Keighley, the Republic of Ireland's under-21 goalkeeper, these days a Spurs player, is on loan at Orient. They were losing to Oldham in the 92nd minute when they got a free kick.

the goalkeeper, as is often the case these days, was winched forward. How many people actually expect this is going to work? Well, the ball comes in and Josh gets a very clean, very good header at the near post and lamps it into the goal, a goal which allows Orient to survive into added on time, to extra time, where they win the tie, by the way. So brilliant for Josh Keighley. And

Jay, you just looked back at it now because you hadn't seen it previously. To me, the striking thing is he'd obviously prepared a goal celebration for the day that he did come up and score. Yeah, that knee slide is pretty perfect. What I would say is that sometimes when you see keepers pull off these last-minute goals, these last-minute headers, they're normally just...

It's more just power than technique. That is a proper striker's glancing header. He's timed that perfect. That technique is perfect. He should be going up for every corner, I reckon, if he's got skills like that. Yeah, put one of the more useless headers of the ball back in the goal and hope for the best. Yeah, absolutely right. Which means that Orient themselves are in the draw for the third round of the FA Cup. As I say, that's coming up in a few hours' time. I'm still...

old-fashioned enough in that particular way to love the third round of the FA Cup draw, even if, of course, the big teams will put out weakened sides should they get a favourable draw. Jack, what kind of draw would you prefer for Spurs? A glamorous tie against one of the Premier League giants where we could all look forward to it, or Marine? I mean, the first thing I want to say about this, and...

is that I'm sickened that the FA Cup third round weekend is happening on the weekend of the 11th and 12th of January, the second weekend of the year. Everybody knows FA Cup third round is the first weekend in January. You shouldn't be having FA Cup third round games in the second weekend of January. That said...

as you can probably tell I take the FA Cup very seriously but I'm also incredibly lazy and therefore my dream is that Tottenham should get Millwall the nearest football league club to where I live in South East London or Charlton Athletic or Bromley in League 2 of course

Which is, again, a very short journey for me. The other one that stands out is Dagenham and Redbridge, one of the two non-league teams left in the competition. And Dagenham, of course, that area is incredibly associated with Spurs' history. You think about Alf Ramsey, Glenn Hoddle, and a whole plethora of players who come from that part of East London. Jimmy Greaves. Jimmy Greaves, exactly. Yeah.

So those are my dream ties. Bromley, Dagenham and Redbridge, Charlton or Millwall, away from home. I think that in this stage of the FA Cup, I think away ties are fascinating. I mean, I guess for me, obviously, I wanted to play a team from the lower divisions because I think there's a bit of romance in that still. I love the Marine tie. It's such a shame that it happened during COVID. I was one of the many, many, many, many, so I'm not getting credit for this,

I suppose fans who bought tickets for the game, knowing full well you couldn't go. And the Marines sent me a photograph of my name in the brick wall they built for the amount of money they made. And it's just lovely that it's there. I also liked the fact that Vinicius celebrated as though he'd just won the Champions League when he got a couple of goals. And I liked those gardens down the one side of the Marine pitch with the numbers on the fence so that when the ball went in there, they could know which door to knock on in order to get the ball back.

But truthfully, I'm going to go for Orient. I'd love us to play at Brisbane Road. I'm from the north London and they've always been my second team and with Josh Keighley having done what he did, there would be a storyline there, particularly if it's

one, one in the 92nd minute and Keely comes up for a corner, you'd all be preparing your, your, your story. So I'd like Spurs to draw someone from the lower leagues and Ori will be ideal. Now look, Spurs at the moment, it's like supporting a championship team. They play every midweek and every weekend. And, uh,

Following Manchester City, Roma, Fulham this week. Can you remind me why we're playing league football on Wednesday and Thursday? Does anyone know? I think this is Amazon's week. I think every game... That might be wrong. Am I right? Every game is on Amazon. So they've given us the joy of quarter past eight kick-offs, which is just an extra 15 minutes is wholly unnecessary. But anyways...

I guess I'll ask you, Jay, what can we expect? Because it's so hard to predict that with Spurs. Although if you take Manchester City and Aston Villa out of it, they're in kind of...

Ah, look, let's be honest, they're in stodgy mid-table form. And Bournemouth are a team who can, on their day, play really, really well. Their forwards are particularly good. Well, Bournemouth have got a pretty decent home record this season, haven't they? They've beaten Arsenal, they've beaten Man City. Very hard to know what's going to happen. I'm expecting it to be quite a tough, quite a tight game.

Kulishevsky should probably start, Solanke should probably start. And so I feel like Spurs should have the quality of in their ranks to get the job done. Jack, last word to you on this? I think it's a really big test. I think, you know, we talk a lot about mentality on this podcast. Do Tottenham have the mental application to...

to really, you know, to produce their top level. The more I think about it, the more I think it's about physicality. It's, you know, Ange Ball is a physical system. It's about can you outrun the opposition? Tottenham need to outrun the opposition to make their football work. And they need to find a way to...

they need to find a way to do that. They need to get players back fit. They probably need to trust other players they haven't trusted so far this season because they've got, you know, without physical output, there's not, you know, the whole house of cards falls apart. Okay, well, I won't pressure you on selection. I think it's unfair given how few Spurs players are available.

and we don't have access necessarily to the charts that the medical team have. Let's see what kind of team they put out. And we'll be back Friday to talk about what I hope will be a win down there on the South Coast. But at the moment, I'm not

not sure what the Spurs were going to get. That's it from the view from the lane. I say we're back on Friday. Just to remind you, you can go and see us on Twitter at VFTL Podcast. Also, of course, on Blue Sky, the ever-growing rival to Twitter. Or you can email us at vftl at theathletic.com. Jack and Jay contribute hugely to the best Spurs coverage anywhere. We'll see you again on Friday. Till then, God bless every one of you. Come on you Spurs!

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