Tottenham Hotspur have now been without Harry Kane for over two months, as well as without Heung-min Son for a number of weeks since his fractured arm.
This removed Jose Mourinho’s two main goal scorers and the only two players in the senior squad who could play as natural strikers.
Since then, Lucas Moura and Steven Bergwijn have been used as makeshift options up top, despite the fact they are wingers by trade.
Unfortunately, this has left little room to rotate the squad and give these two men a rest, meaning they have each played near enough every minute.
It certainly didn’t help that Spurs went to extra time against Norwich City on Wednesday, before losing the game on penalties.
Jose Mourinho said after the match that Bergwijn and Lucas claimed they had nothing more in their legs and were risking injury before being taken off (Football London).
Mourinho was asked today about their fitness and chances of starting against Burnley (Football London): “They are players with a but. Steven comes from Holland, one match per week, completely different league, completely different intensity. You can imagine that to play, play, play here is a different world. Lucas, I think he’s never played as much in his life, or in Paris or here in Mauricio’s period, he was never like a first-choice player.
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“When he was playing, he was playing 20 minutes, he was in one game and didn’t play the second. From the perspective of rotation when you have lots of players in the same positions, it happened in Paris. It happened here at Tottenham with Lucas, Lamela, Kane, Llorente, Son, lots of options.
“In the past three months, he’s found himself in a position where he’s got to play every minute. Even in positions that are not originally his positions. So he’s being absolutely incredible for me.
“So yes there are buts behind them, but they have to play. They have to play. If not we are throwing away our chances of winning matches. So we have to go with them. We have to analyse how, we have to analyse if both at the same time and go with everything we have from the beginning, keep them on the bench and the game plan is to try to go later or split minutes between them. We had to try to find the best strategy to try to win matches, but also to give the players the best chance to perform.”
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