Team news | Ange on Richy, Cuti and Micky

Ange Postecoglou reported that Richarlison was troubled by a groin injury in Sunday’s Premier League clash against Leicester City.

Richy opened the scoring on 33 minutes but had to be substituted 10 minutes into the second half - by then, we were trailing 2-1 after Leicester’s quickfire double after half-time, and that’s how it stayed at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

It was another tough day for our already-depleted squad as James Maddison was a late withdrawal. However, Ange did have some positive news with Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero, out since October and November respectively, ‘getting close’ to a return.

The assumption was that Ange was looking after Richy’s fitness in terms of minutes played after his recent return from a long-term absence. However, speaking on our Review Show, Ange told us: “He’s actually feeling his groin. He probably should have come off at half-time, but he wanted to stay out there and do another 10 minutes. I could see he wasn’t moving very well, so we had to take him off.

“Pape was the same. He shouldn’t have started today, but we lost Madders really late, so we had to make a change and start with Pape. I can’t get away from the fact that these players are giving everything they can. They’ll get some help soon. In the next 10 days, two weeks we’ll get some significant players back, and that will give a boost to the whole group. As I keep saying to the players and the staff, there are still great opportunities to make this season a special one for us, we need to dig deep and focus on that.”

Asked if we could see some players back for our final UEFA Europa League league phase game against Elfsburg back in N17 on Thursday night (8pm UK), Ange added: “We’ll see. There are definitely a couple getting close, Micky and Cuti, they’ll be training with the group, and even just having them training is great. There are another couple who are not too far off, on the horizon as well, so that will definitely help.”