Hamstring injury rules out Pedro: Spurs v Brighton team news
No way Pedro! Or in this case, no Pedro at all. The headline team news ahead of Brighton travelling to Spurs is that Joao Pedro has been ruled out with a hamstring injury and will now miss an indefinite period of action.
Losing Pedro is a serious blow to the Albion. He has scored 19 times already this season to set a new record for most Brighton goals in a Premier League season.
Pedro is now just four shy of surpassing the 22 top flight goals Michael Robinson notched in the 1980-81 campaign, which we are not supposed to count as the actual club record because it happened before Sky Sports invented football in 1992.
The Brazilian will not be the only absentee for the trip to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Roberto De Zerbi will miss the game too, leaving the suave and sophisticated Andrea Maldera in charge.
De Zerbi underwent what has been described as “very invasive dental surgery” after joining a a six-hour long queue in Bristol on Wednesday to sign up for an NHS dentist which the police had to introduce crowd control measures to manage.
Maldera also stood in for De Zerbi at the pre-Spurs press conference, being the bearer of the bad news regarding Pedro.
“He has a problem,” Maldera said. “We don’t know how many weeks but we don’t want to take a risk and sure he can’t play tomorrow.”
On the plus side, Ansu Fati is ikely to get a longer runout having made his comeback from a muscle injury as a late substitute in the 4-1 win over Crystal Palace last week.
Maldera highlighted that the return of the on-loan Barcelona forward would lessen the blow of losing Pedro somewhat.
“Yes, Joao is very important for us but Ansu Fati is able to play, is ready, Evan Ferguson, Danny Welbeck, we have a lot of strikers.”
Adam Lallana will also come into contention to replace Pedro at number 10 in the Brighton team to take on Spurs.
“Adam Lallana – why not?” Maldera asked himself. Why not indeed. Lallana should be pretty refreshed having not started since the December defeat at Arsenal, a game in which he hardly touched the ball.
Further good news comes from Japan exiting the Asian Cup at the quarter final stage against an Alireza Jahanbakhsh-inspired Iran last Saturday.
Kaoru Mitoma returned to Brighton earlier in the week and will be part of the squad travelling to Spurs.
“He worked well but he travelled a lot,” reported Maldera of the Japanese Bullet Train. “I think we make a decision this evening or tomorrow morning.”
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Last season’s visit to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium saw Brighton famously cheated out of any points as incorrect on-field and VAR decisions helped Spurs to a 2-1 win.
Officiating duties on this occasion fall to Sam Barrott. A former youth player at Halifax Town in his first season as a Premier League referee, Mr Barrott’s only previous Albion game was the 0-0 draw away at West Ham United last month. He had a fine evening on that occasion.
More concerning will be the presence of Jarred Gillett in the VAR room. Mr Gillett lasted watched Brighton from Stockley Park in the 3-2 defeat at Chelsea, when the Seagulls conceded a controversial penalty.
For the sake of De Zerbi’s sanity watching from home and only able to eat soft foods like scrambled egg, let us hope the officials are not the central characters in a Brighton against Spurs game again.
(Parts of this post may not be accurate. De Zerbi obviously doesn’t use an HNS dentist).
