One of Tottenham Hotspur’s top performers from this season needs to be careful with his recent displays dipping below the standards he has set throughout the course of this campaign.
Ange Postecoglou was somewhat critical of the Tottenham Hotspur players who featured against Crystal Palace in their 2-0 defeat at home to the South London club.
The Australian manager was disappointed that the players who he fielded did not stake their claim for more consistent minutes ahead of the Europa League final.
The Spurs boss made eight changes to the team that defeated Bodo/Glimt, however, the players on the fringes were rather underwhelming during Sunday’s London derby defeat.
One player in particular, though, had a rather torrid afternoon in North London and needs to be careful of not falling out of favour again.
Djed Spence at risk of falling out of favour at Tottenham
Djed Spence was certainly one of the players against Crystal Palace who really disappointed and his displays as of late have been rather underwhelming.
Since making his first Premier League start for Tottenham back in December, the 24-year-old has really impressed at Tottenham, but has recently fallen back into the periphery of Postecoglou’s squad.
Spence has started in all of Spurs’ last nine league matches, however, the team have won just once during that period. In the Europa League, he has been benched for the last two rounds.
At the start of the season, Tottenham were open to selling Spence as he was not in the plans of Postecoglou.
However, Spence worked hard to prove Postecoglou wrong and his displays for the Lilywhites proved exactly that. But now he needs to ensure that hard work is not undone by dropping the standards which he has set for most of this year.
Djed Spence was very poor in Tottenham’s defeat vs Crystal Palace
Speaking after the defeat to Palace, Postecoglou told the media: “Guys had the opportunity today to put their name forward and put some pressure on the guys who played the other night. Fair to say there wasn’t any compelling evidence of that.”
The former Nottingham Forest full-back’s performance against the Eagles certainly feels included in that statement, as he should have been a player who stepped up.
Tottenham’s defensive set-up against Palace was slammed and Spence’s poor positioning was capitalised upon by Palace’s attackers.
For now, Pedro Porro and Destiny Udogie won’t be losing any sleep over losing their starting spot in the team to Spence.
