Tottenham Hotspur will be without yet another important midfield piece for next week’s Europa League final against Manchester United after Dejan Kulusevski underwent successful surgery to repair the patella tendon in his right knee on Wednesday.
Kulusevski suffered the injury in Spurs’ 2-0 defeat to Crystal Palace on Sunday and was subbed after just 19 minutes. The 25-year-old Swede suffered what appeared to be knee-to-knee contact from Marc Guehi and stayed down. After trying to run it off, Kulusevski had to come off and walked off the pitch under his own power, but was limping heavily.
MORE — Latest Premier League injury news, updates
Spurs were already set to be without midfielders James Maddison and Lucas Bergvall, the other two creative ball progressors for the final in Bilbao, now Ange Postecoglou will have be left without only defensive-minded midfield options from which to pick his team next Wednesday. Rodrigo Bentancur and Yves Bissouma should be considered nailed-on starters, with Pape Matar Sarr the only other natural midfielder in the squad.
Archie Gray projects as a midfielder long-term, but the vast majority of his minutes this season have been played along the backline. Perhaps Destiny Udogie and/or Pedro Porro could be options as well, considering the way that Postecoglou has, at times but not so much recently, inverted his full backs to get them into more central areas pushing forward in attack.
Dejan Kulusevski latest injury news (Sunday update)
Speaking after the game, Spurs boss Ange Postecoglou gave the following update: “He should be ok. Just talking to him after. The medical team are not too concerned about him. It was just a knock.”
Hopefully this was just Spurs being overly cautious, as Postecoglou will not want to lose any other key players after a season of battling through injuries.
With creative attacking midfielders James Maddison and Lucas Bergvall already out for the rest of the season, he needs Kulusevski to be fit as his creative flair could be key in the Europa League final.
