Just when it felt Tottenham’s season was starting to turn around.
Hugo Lloris’ knee injury, which will rule him out for at least six weeks, will keep him out of the Spurs team for crucial games in the Premier League, Champions League and the FA Cup. And it comes at the worst possible moment, just as Spurs looked like they had turned a corner. Three straight wins, three clean sheets, and a sense that the dark mood was starting to lift.
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But now Antonio Conte will have to face the next nine games before the March internationals with Fraser Forster in goal instead of Lloris. This run includes both Champions League last-16 legs against AC Milan, the FA Cup fifth round at Sheffield United — and the potential for a quarter-final too — and big home league games against West Ham United and Chelsea. By the end of that run, Spurs could be back in the top four and still in two cups. Or they could have drifted down the league and gone out of both cups, with just 10 games left to save the season.
High stakes then, and probably a bigger test for Forster than anyone expected when he signed for Tottenham last summer. Mainly because the role of being Spurs’ second-choice goalkeeper does not generally extend to facing a long run of big games. There are some clubs who like to have a flatter hierarchy between their goalkeepers as well as genuine competition (Forster will remember his own experience competing with Alex McCarthy at Southampton last season, coming after a few years when he was clearly second-choice), but Spurs are not one of these.
Lloris has been such a part of the furniture since he signed from Lyon almost 11 years ago that Spurs’ choice of backup keeper has often felt like an after-thought. Ever since he supplanted Brad Friedel in his first season, back when Andre Villas-Boas was manager, there has been no question that he was first-choice — and no suggestions that he should ever be dropped.
Michel Vorm was a hugely popular backup who fitted perfectly with the Pochettino philosophy but, over the course of his six years at Tottenham, he only started 11 league games. Neither Joe Hart nor Pierluigi Gollini started a single league game, and Forster has only started one, at Brentford on Boxing Day, just a few days after Lloris returned from losing the World Cup final with France in Qatar. That day was the first time Lloris had missed a league game for Spurs since March 2020, just before the COVID-19 shutdown.
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The only other Spurs goalkeeper to get a consistent run of games was Paulo Gazzaniga, who took over when Lloris suffered his last serious injury. That was when Lloris broke his arm during the 3-0 defeat at Brighton & Hove Albion in October 2019; a defeat that showed clearer than ever before that the writing was on the wall for Mauricio Pochettino. Gazzaniga had to hold the fort for the next three and a half months, playing 21 games in a row. By the time Lloris came back, Jose Mourinho was two months into his time in charge.
And if Lloris’ knee injury had happened last season or the season before, then a prolonged absence might have been met with despair from the Spurs fans. But the reality of the situation is that this season we have seen a different Lloris. For the first time, it looks as if age might be starting to catch up with the 36-year-old. Alternatively, you may argue that this has been an emotionally challenging season for Lloris, dominated by a World Cup which he must have always known would be his last major tournament for France (at which he got so close to retaining the title).
Lloris has made high-profile mistakes in big games: Spurs’ home defeats to Newcastle United, Aston Villa and Arsenal all started with an error from their captain. When Spurs lost 3-1 at Arsenal in October, they were at 1-1 and playing well before two Lloris errors effectively cost them the game. For the first time, Spurs fans are starting to talk about a future beyond Lloris and whether the club should sign a new first-choice goalkeeper in the summer. Not only because of his shot-stopping, which is getting worse, but his struggles under pressure with the ball at his feet, given how the team try to play out from the back under Antonio Conte.
That all said, Lloris has looked solid in Spurs’ last two Premier League games and of course Spurs will miss more than just his goalkeeping. Lloris has been Tottenham’s captain for eight years now and he has always been a consistent, intelligent presence around the club. In a team that is sometimes accused of lacking leadership and personality, he will obviously be a loss.
The real question heading into the next few months is how big the gap is between Lloris and Forster, and what exactly the latter can bring to the role. Forster has only played four games for Spurs so far: against Nottingham Forest in the League Cup, Portsmouth and Preston North End in the FA Cup and Brentford in the Premier League. The sample size is too small to judge, although Forster was criticised for his lack of speed when Brentford went into a 2-0 lead in the league game on Boxing Day.
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But Forster — unlike Gollini last season — does have plenty of relevant experience to bring to Spurs. He is 34 years old and starred for Celtic for years (including in the Champions League). Roy Hodgson took him to the 2014 World Cup before he had ever even played in the Premier League. When Forster returned to England, he became an integral part of the Southampton team under Ronald Koeman. In the 2014-15 season, when the Saints finished seventh, he set a club top-flight record of 14 clean sheets.
At his best, Forster is a vocal presence and an old-fashioned goalkeeper. Not especially quick off his line and not the most comfortable with the ball at his feet, but a good shot-stopper who is hard to beat. It was difficult for him at St Mary’s when he lost his place to McCarthy and, quite naturally, he did not enjoy being second choice there. Many Southampton fans wanted Forster to sign a new deal and supplant McCarthy as the first choice for this season, but no agreement with the club could be reached. And a move to Tottenham last summer, being second choice to Lloris, did offer the slight possibility that he might get to play in big games.
Lloris’ injury opens the door for Forster again to play in huge games, like he used to at Celtic. They are the games he always wanted to get back to. Spurs fans will be hoping Forster’s experience means they do not notice too much of a difference.
(Photo: Visionhaus/Getty Images)
