There is a certain irony that Antonio Conte’s surgery coincided with the first period of the season when Tottenham had a fully-fit squad, only for the head coach to be rocked by two major injuries on his return to work.
Conte was back on the training ground on Thursday following a week spent recuperating in Italy and had to immediately make provisions for the loss of captain Hugo Lloris and Yves Bissouma.
Lloris will miss six weeks with a knee injury sustained in Sunday’s win over Manchester City, while Bissouma was set for surgery on Friday on a stress fracture to his ankle, likely leading to an extended spell on the sidelines and stretching Conte’s squad.
Conte will have to rely on youngsters Oliver Skipp and Pape Matar Sarr for midfield cover, while the absence of Lloris robs the Italian of a key player and dressing room leader for a defining period of the campaign.
Lloris struggled following the Premier League restart, making costly mistakes for the opening goals in the defeats by Aston Villa and Arsenal, but Conte never seriously considered dropping the 36-year-old.
Fraser Forster will deputise against Leicester on Saturday and, all being well, for the duration of Lloris’s recovery, which is set to include the two-legged Champions League last-16 tie against AC Milan, as well as home derbies against Chelsea and West Ham.
Forster, 34, is vastly experienced in the Premier League and has played Champions League football with Celtic, while the ex- England international is considered a steady presence and a positive influence around the training ground.
“We trust in him and he knows that, because it’s not the first game he’s going to play,” Conte’s assistant, Cristian Stellini, said of Forster, who has made four appearances this term.
“He’s an important player because he was also in the national team, so we don’t have to transfer to him too much confidence because he has confidence. He has great experience and it’s only the relationship you create with him that lets him understand that you trust in him. Also, he trains very well every day. He even pushes Hugo to train well.”
The timing of Lloris’s injury is nonetheless frustrating for Conte, coming just as the skipper appeared to have turned a corner and Spurs’s defence had recovered some form.
After conceding 21 times in 10 matches up to the 4-2 defeat at Manchester City, Spurs have now kept five clean sheets in seven games, including last weekend’s magnificent rearguard against the champions.
Losing Lloris threatens their upturn, particularly as Cristian Romero is suspended tomorrow following his dismissal against City.
“I don’t think there is some aspect that [Forster] is better than Hugo Lloris in, because Hugo Lloris is a world champion,” added Stellini. “He’s just different. Every player has particular skills. Maybe Fraser uses his physicality differently. But they are both great players and I don’t want to create difference between them.”
Conte, meanwhile, is under a degree of pressure to ensure his return to the touchline is a success, after Stellini and Ryan Mason did a fine job against Pep Guardiola’s side.
Stellini yesterday revealed that the decision to push Eric Dier into the midfield against City was decided in-game by Mason and himself, and the key tactical tweak helped to create the winning goal by Harry Kane.
Leicester should be a very different type of game, evidenced by Spurs’s 6-2 win over them last autumn and Brendan Rodgers’s side’s chaotic win over Aston Villa last weekend.
Kane and a rejuvenated Heung-min Son, who scored a hat-trick from the bench in September, should enjoy facing Rodgers’s high defensive line but Leicester are also more than capable of getting players in behind Spurs themselves.
Conte may therefore prefer the pace of Davinson Sanchez to Clement Lenglet as Romero’s replacement, and also faces a decision over whether to hand a debut to Pedro Porro, the £40million January signing from Sporting CP. Emerson Royal was magnificent against City, so is likely to keep his place in the team.
