Winks: ‘Hugo Lloris has won matches for us’

Hugo Lloris has produced decisive saves on numerous occasions lately – to the point where Harry Winks has hailed him a “match-winner”.

Following a Man of the Match display in last weekend’s 3-1 win over Leicester City, where he crucially saved Jamie Vardy’s penalty to prevent the Foxes from making it 1-1 and then denied Harvey Barnes one-on-one as Leicester threatened a late revival, our goalkeeper and captain was at it again under the Champions League lights in midweek.

In the dying moments of a tough first half against Borussia Dortmund at Wembley, the Frenchman somehow clawed Dan-Axel Zagadou’s header away from under the crossbar low down to his right, denying the German giants the lead and – crucially – an away goal in the two-legged last 16 tie.

That allowed us to go up a level in the second half and record a blistering 3-0 win against a side that’s built up a five-point lead at the top of the Bundesliga.

Looking back at that key save just before half-time, midfielder Harry said: “It was massive – it was a great save and the match-winning save as well, because if you go into half-time 1-0 down it’s a different game, but for Hugo to keep us in it the way he did was incredible and credit to him for doing that.

“You can see that he’s in great form. He probably doesn’t get the credit he deserves at times because we’ve got so many high-flying players at the front doing so well at the moment, but people like Hugo pulling off saves like that, which was fantastic to keep us in the game – it’s just as important a match-winning moment for us as the other boys scoring up top.”

Summing up Hugo’s contributions to our excellent run of form, Winksy proclaimed: “He’s world-class. There’s a reason why he’s won the World Cup and why he’s as key to us as he is – because he can produce moments like we’ve seen this week.

“He’s a fantastic player, a fantastic captain and we’re lucky to have him as our skipper.”