Tottenham will be forced to push through their plans to sign a new left-back after the news that Destiny Udogie is set to miss close to two months with his hamstring injury.
The 22-year-old suffered the injury early in the second half of the 2-2 draw against Wolves on Sunday and the severity was immediately clear in the way the Italian left-back struggled to even walk off the pitch and down the tunnel. Udogie is not expected to return to full fitness and sharpness until late February at the earliest.
It is yet another blow to Ange Postecoglou and his threadbare Spurs squad and the Australian currently has seven players out injured, including four members of his first choice backline, one suspended midfielder in Rodrigo Bentancur and while Richarlison and Mikey Moore are edging closer to a return, it's not a given that they will both be involved on the bench for Saturday's match against in-form Newcastle.
If both are not ready yet after so long out with injury and illness respectively then it will mean another match for Tottenham with the number of unavailable players reaching double figures.
Postecoglou told football.london about Udogie on Sunday: "I think it's a hamstring. We've been relying on a core group of players because we just haven't had the ability to rotate, so at some point, it was going to catch up with us. Unfortunately, it caught up with Destiny."
Udogie has played the fourth most amount of minutes at Spurs with 1,816 to his name. His role is a deeper running one to Pedro Porro's on the other side with the Spaniard using his ball-playing ability to hit early crosses from deep, while Udogie's job is more of a constantly overlapping or inverting one.
Djed Spence will fill in for Udogie in the mean time and his performances in both full-back spots have raised questions over why the 24-year-old was not used more often earlier in the season in order to allow more rotation for Udogie and Porro. Spence was not included in the Europa League squad due to a lack of room but could have been used in the Premier League games around those fixtures.
football.london reported on Monday that Spurs are looking at potential January recruits across a number of positions, including a new centre-back, left-back, midfielder and are considering bringing in a new goalkeeper, while Postecoglou also previously told football.london that a new attacker could be in order if his internal options in the attacking third remain slim.
The decision to sign a new left-back was not taken last summer despite Postecoglou having to play midfielder Oliver Skipp and centre-back Micky van de Ven in the role in the final month of last season while Udogie was out after having surgery on his quadriceps and Ben Davies was also absent with a calf problem.
Davies has been used primarily as a centre-back this season with 18-year-old midfielder Archie Gray having to fill in at times at left-back as well as more recently at centre-back due to the missing faces in the backline. Sergio Reguilon remains at the club and filled in for Udogie with Spence suspended on Sunday but other than that he has only played one minute of football this season. The Spaniard is not part of the club's future and is running towards the end of his contract.
It's difficult to understand how Postecoglou or Tottenham were confident enough that there was enough natural left-back options going into this season. Among others, Spurs were linked with Lecce's versatile full-back Patrick Dorgu in the summer but the 20-year-old remained at the Italian club and signed a new deal in October.
With Tottenham needing a new centre-back in January, another option would be to target a versatile defender who can play both centrally and as a full-back to help cover two weakened areas of the squad.
With Postecoglou having such low player availability yet a match every three days until well into next month, he needs transfer help quickly and someone to give Spence a hand at left-back needs to be a priority.
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