fEarlier today we reported on Ange Postecoglou’s press conference comments where he said an unreported number of Tottenham Hotspur players did not train due to a virus circulating through the team. Predictably, there’s been tons of unsourced speculation about who those players are and whether they’d be fit to play tomorrow in Tottenham’s match against Newcastle.
Now it looks like we know the status of one player, at least. talkSPORT is reporting that Fraser Forster is one of the ill players and is not fit to start the match, meaning third-string keeper Brandon Austin is set to (finally?) make his club debut in goal.
talkSPORT isn’t a GOOD source, but it is a media source, and that’s better than the glorified ITK accounts that have been chattering on social media about this. We can hope that talkSPORT is wrong, but at this point that doesn’t seem very likely — there’s a ton of smoke in the air even if we haven’t (yet) heard from the likes of Dan Kilpatrick or Alasdair Gold.
Austin is a 25-year old academy graduate, and he’s mostly known as the guy who competed with Alfie Whiteman, Spurs’ fourth keeper, in Tottenham’s reserves. Austin has yet to play a competitive match for Spurs, but the club gifted him a new five year contract through 2029 this summer, which caused a few scratched heads as it appears he’s not particularly highly regarded at the club. Regardless, it’s not great when any club has to resort to their third keeper to play in a match — most of the time they’re third keepers for a reason.
At any rate, Spurs’ hands are tied — there’s no one else aside from Whiteman or an academy keeper who can play tomorrow, so Austin will get his shot. He looked decent when I watched him play in preseason and there’s an argument that he’d be at least a push with Forster due to his increased mobility, but this is also a player who has been on loan in Denmark and MLS with neither team taking up an option to purchase him. I get the sense that both Austin and Whiteman are still in the squad as much or more for their homegrown/club trained status as for their keeping ability.
There are reportedly other players suffering illness, but no reports as to who they are or if they’ll be fit enough to play even part of the match. But with Spurs’ squad already stretched so thin you can see daylight through it, losing any more players for whatever reason is terrifying. This is a disaster.
