ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE Tottenham 2 Birmingham City 1:ALREADY TOTTENHAM'S strength in depth is heading for the shallows. They have yet to drop a point but players are dropping like flies.
Any pleasure they took from Saturday’s win over Birmingham, which maintained their 100 per cent record, was numbed by yesterday’s news that the supposed calf injury which put Luka Modric out of the game early in the second half was in fact a broken leg. He is not expected to return to training for six weeks.
Bad news for Harry Redknapp and not the happiest of portents for Croatia’s chances of holding up England’s World Cup progress when the teams meet at Wembley on Wednesday week.
Modric cracked the fibula just below his right knee when he made a clumsy challenge on Lee Bowyer, giving away a free-kick. Up to that point his influence on the left for Spurs had been greater than the heavily-marked Aaron Lennon on the right, even though it was Lennon who eventually won the game with a goal in the fifth and final minute of stoppage time.
“It’s like my whole world has crumbled because I will be out for at least six weeks. I am terribly sad,” Modric said.
Redknapp may need to get busy in the transfer market before tomorrow’s deadline. He is preparing a €5.5 million offer for Portsmouth’s Niko Kranjcar. The Spurs manager was already faced with having to mend his fences, or rather defences, with Ledley King back in the treatment room after suffering a groin strain which forced him to miss the second half.
Spurs have defensive problems with Jonathan Woodgate and Michael Dawson injured. The loss of King on Saturday looked like costing Tottenham a win until Lennon came to the rescue. When Spurs resume after the international break they will face Manchester United and Chelsea on successive weekends. Even at full strength they would be hard pressed to keep the run going.
Peter Crouch, whose height advantage cannot hide the fact that he often deals more comfortably with the ball when it is on the ground. This time, however, the introduction of Crouch for Modric transformed a match.
Crouch’s arrival found Birmingham trying to remember where they had left their ARP helmets and after seeing a header hit the bar and another cleared off the line, he finally beat Joe Hart with one that looped over the goalkeeper into the far corner.
At which point Alex McLeish brought on an extra striker, the Ecuadorian Christian Benitez, who quickly exposed Tottenham’s defensive frailties and was challenging Alan Hutton for a ball that Carlo Cudicini might have gathered but instead broke loose for Bowyer to equalise.
A slip by Stephen Carr allowed the excellent Tom Huddlestone to set up Roman Pavlyuchenko, who had replaced a muted Jermain Defoe, for a square pass across the face of the defence to Lennon, who cut inside the score the winner.
Guardian Service
