Roberto De Zerbi held his first press conference ahead of Saturday’s Premier League opening match at Brentford. While the press conference was overshadowed slightly by the fresh news that an agreement has been reached with Manchester City for the purchase of Savinho, there was still plenty to talk about in the match.
For starters, as mentioned previously RDZ named the new Tottenham Hotspur leadership group, which includes Micky van de Ven as club captain, along with Pedro Porro, Ben Davies, James
Maddison, and Archie Gray as vice captains. But two of that group will not feature tomorrow vs. Brentford — Micky and Porro were both ruled out of contention, as was Pape Matar Sarr.
“Micky is not on the list tomorrow like Pedro Porro. James Maddison is inside [it], Solanke inside, Udogie, Fernandes also. Sarr not because he felt some pain, but nothing big. Kudus is almost ready.
“Today [Micky] worked with us, with the group and he is going very well. He suffered a problem during the pre-season of Australia, I don’t know if it was the flight, but not a big problem. We have Senesi, we have Ben Davies and in the right condition to play the game tomorrow.”
A lot to unpack there! Spurs have been strangely silent on Micky’s absence from preseason, and we all assumed it was injury related. De Zerbi didn’t provide much of an update, but Micky’s been in the club socials a LOT lately, and was just named Captain so if there was a major issue we’d probably know about it by now. Sounds like he’ll be coming back sooner rather than later. Pedro Porro’s absence is likely just fitness related; he only just returned from his post-World Cup break. Sounds like Sarr is just out with a minor knock and the club is being cautious.
So what does that mean for the lineup tomorrow? Well, RDZ gave some clues there too, answering a question about whether Spurs are going to sign another right back after selling Djed Spence.
“In this moment I think no, we have Archie Gray, he prefers playing in the midfield position, but he can play very well also as a right-back.I think we are good. I don’t want 25, 26 players, I want 21, 22 players, I think that’s enough, especially if these players or more players, they can adapt in more positions on the pitch, and I think we have many players who can play in different positions, Gray midfielder, right back, Gallagher number 10 or number 8, it’s the same Micky van de Ven or Ben Davies left back, I think we have Kudus, winger or number 10, we have a lot of solutions.”
So that sounds to me like we’ll see Antonin Kinsky start in goal, a back line of Gray – Van Hecke – Senesi – Robertson/Udogie, a midfield of Tonali – Gallagher – Fernandes, and a front line of Moore – Richarlison – Tel. There might be some surprises in there, but that’s the safe bet based on what we’ve seen recently in preseason. Even if he signs today I doubt Savinho will feature.
I suspect this isn’t the final starting lineup once the window is closed and all new signings are brought up to speed, but this feels reasonable for at least tomorrow. We could get some rotation for the midweek League Cup match against Charlton.
