Archie Gray faces Erling Haaland litmus test as Tottenham star ranked worst in the Premier League

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The statistics do not make for good reading for Archie Gray or Tottenham. Spurs have endured one of their worst Premier League campaigns in years to date, with the Lilywhites currently 12th in the table with 12 games left to play.

This has happened in the midst of a huge injury crisis in N17, with head coach Ange Postecoglou having to do without a plethora of first team players for long periods of the season.

Micky van de Ven, Cristian Romero, Richarlison and Dominic Solanke all remain sidelined, although all four are on the comeback trail. The former duo being out has put pressure on the likes of Gray, who has spent almost the entire season playing out of position.

Gray, whose preferred position is central midfield, spent the majority of last season playing as a right-back for Leeds United. And he was called upon to play there for Spurs after joining in a £40million deal in the summer too.

However, it was the shift to centre-back in the absence of Van de Ven, Romero, Ben Davies and recently Radu Dragusin that was the biggest issue. Gray had never played there before and at 18-years-old was slotting into an unfamiliar position in his first season at the very highest level.

Mistakes were bound to happen. They have, and he has grown bigger and better for them. He has never shied away from the challenge and always stood up to be counted, picking himself up from every setback to go again.

When more senior players around him have gone missing, Gray has stepped up. He is not a centre-back, that is for sure, but he will be a far better player from his tough experiences this season and go on to show why he is one of the most talented prospects in England.

At 18, Gray is calm and composed on the ball, has an eye for a pass - as shown in the ball to Son Heung-min for the opening goal against Ipswich Town at the weekend - and is big and strong despite his tender years. He doesn't shirk a challenge and when he was given the runaround by Liam Delap in the first few minutes at the weekend, he did not go into his shell, he stood up tall and lifted himself to another level.

He has only made 10 tackles this season and made 30 clearances - numbers that do not look good for a centre-back in a struggling team. He has only been dispossessed seven times, though - just twice more than the highly regarded centre-back down the road by the name of William Saliba.

Postecoglou is a big fan. Speaking after the Ipswich game, the Spurs boss said: "Like I said during the week, we know he's playing out of position, we know we're throwing him challenges. Delap's a handful for anybody in this league. First few minutes, he caused him some problems. But I love that Arch takes on that challenge. He doesn't shy away from it, he doesn't hide. He just keeps going.

"As I said, we'll get enormous growth out of him during this period. But right now he's contributing to us, he's helping us. I thought we had to do some defensive work today, not a lot, but the defensive work we had to do was important. Against, like I said, a real top striker. I thought he handled it well."

But while many Tottenham fans would tell you how good Gray has been in unfamiliar territory, the stats like those above, tell a different story. And, according to FotMob, Gray is the worst ranked player in the Premier League this season.

The FotMob player rating is calculated based on more than 300 individual stats per player per match from Opta. Gray has an average ranking of 6.15 - the joint 290th score along with West Ham's Vladimir Coufal of all players this season.

The ranking makes sense, given everything that has happened to Spurs and Gray this season, but watch Gray and you would be hard pushed to find any football fan declare him the worst player in the division. After initially struggling against Delap before finding his feet, Gray faces the real litmus test of his time at centre-back when Tottenham take on Erling Haaland and Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday night.

Haaland is probably the biggest bully of a centre-forward he will ever come up against and he may just be the best choice for the role, even though Ben Davies could return.