Ange Postecoglou will have been tearing his hair out to lose two more players to suspension and another to injury as Tottenham won 2-0 at Nottingham Forest on Friday night (15 December).
The Australian’s blistering start to life at Spurs came off the rails after the selection crisis in his squad became too much to overcome following his first defeat of the campaign, with nine men on the pitch, against Chelsea on 6 November.
So with the likes of key men like Micky van de Ven and James Maddison out long-term already, and departures on the horizon to the Africa Cup of Nations and the Asia Cup, the last thing he needed at the City Ground was more of a headache.
While his players, inspired by Dejan Kulusevski, backed up their excellent 4-1 defeat of Newcastle with another three points he was forced to replace Brennan Johnson on his big return to Forest with a head injury, had Destiny Udogie ruled out for the Everton game for a needless booking, and then saw Yves Bissouma shown a straight red after a VAR review for what Tim Sherwood called a “ridiculous” challenge on Ryan Yates.
That both Udogie and Bissouma were only recently back from their last suspensions, after red cards against Chelsea and Luton Town respectively, will have only been more infuriating.
And Postecolgou is lucky that Christian Romero is also not suspended again already after his own red card against Mauricio Pochettino’s men as he escaped another red for a foul on Callum Wilson as Tottenham won last week.
Speaking live on Sky Sports Soccer Saturday on 16 December Sherwood admitted Bissouma and Romero are a problem for the manager.
He said: “Yeah it is. They play a high-tempo game and they need to slow themselves out of possession sometimes… Bissouma mis-controls it and tries to win it back, and he flies into a ridiculous tackle and it’s naughty.
“It was a yellow card on-field but it was a double-red card for me and quite rightly got sent off. You saw Postecoglou look at the big screen and he was disappointed with it as well, not the fact that it was a red card but the fact his player is going to be missing for four games now.
“Romero, when the game’s won against Newcastle, should have been sent off as well, he got away with that one. So [Postecoglou] needs to have a word with them about it. I like Bissouma, I think he’s been fantastic, but that looks so bad. He could have injured Yates, it was a real bad, bad tackle.”
The former Tottenham boss suggested it made more sense to highlight the problem to players when they are winning while calling the ex-Brighton midfielder’s red card “irresponsible”.
He went on: “It’s really hard to put the devil into a player, and taking it away from them sometimes is a difficult situation, but that’s not devil there, that is petulance of the highest order, he has no reason to go into that tackle…
“Like I say, Romero as well is a player who I hold my breath every time he goes into a tackle… [against Chelsea] that was a horrendous tackle. The two tackles that we’ve seen from Romero and Bissouma are really poor tackles and you could hurt your opposition.”
While both players are high-quality, important parts of Postecoglou’s line-up their tackling statistically is a problem.
According to Opta stats on FBRef.com this season Bissouma makes 3.73 tackles per 90 minutes, yet commits 1.42 fouls on average from that number.
More alarmingly, of those fouls, he is being booked at a rate of over once every other game (0.52 per 90), and is now sent off well above once every 10 games (0.15 per 90).
And according to Sofa Score stats, he is only winning 59% of his duels this season, with 61% won on the ground and just 38% in the air, suggesting he needs to improve significantly in the challenge.
Romero on the other hand makes just 2.48 tackles per game this term and commits almost a foul a game from that (0.96), while getting booked in every third game (0.32 per 90).
His red card percentage is currently just below one in 10 (0.08) but benefits from his lucky escape against Newcastle, although Sofa Score shows his duel success rate is better at 71%.
Postecoglou and his Tottenham players have received plenty of deserved plaudits this season for the way they play, even as it has invited trouble at times, but it is being increasingly undermined by suspensions on top of the injuries that are harder to guard against.
Fouls aren’t necessarily a red flag in themselves, as Manchester City appear to have become experts at using them to their advantage, but if the likes of Bissouma and Romero are getting carded at such a rate from the level of fouls they commit it is likely to continue leaving the manager short-handed.