Dejan Kulusevski<\/a>. While the England international is finally back in training after struggling with an ankle problem since the summer, the Swede is yet to return after patella surgery in his right knee in May last year.<\/p>\nAt first it was assumed that Kulusevski would miss the start of the season and then Frank said he hoped to have him available by the end of last year and now it could be another month until the 25-year-old is ready to try again after feeling discomfort in his knee when he initially returned to training on the grass.<\/p>\n
“It was not going forward as quickly as we thought but it’s an injury we haven\u2019t seen that much in football history,” admitted Frank. “It’s a complicated injury, where it\u2019s important to make sure there\u2019s no pain in the knee. That\u2019s why he got an injection and it hopefully will help. So in three to four weeks\u2019 time, he\u2019ll be on the grass pain-free.”<\/p>\n
Spurs go into their FA Cup clash with high-flying Aston Villa on Saturday without Kudus, Kulusevski, Solanke, Rodrigo Bentancur, Lucas Bergvall, James Maddison and potentially Destiny Udogie, although the Italian is back in training. Pape Matar Sarr and Yves Bissouma have been away at the Africa Cup of Nations, with Senegal and Mali facing each other last night and Bissouma sent off.<\/p>\n
With the Lilywhites missing central midfielders galore and football.london having previously reported that Frank wanted another midfielder, the Dane was asked if that was now a priority position.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019re looking in every position. We also have a few away at the Africa Cup of Nations,” he said. “I think, when you want to improve the squad, of course there are some positions that are maybe more obvious than others, but we are out there. If we can improve the squad, we\u2019ll improve the squad.”<\/p>\n
Frank will also be without captain Cristian Romero, who has received a one-game ban and a \u00a350,000 fine following an FA charge for failing to leave the pitch promptly and behaving in a confrontational manner towards the referee after his red card against Liverpool last month.<\/p>\n
Romero accepted the charge and Tottenham will not appeal the decision, meaning the Argentine will serve his third one-game suspension of the season so far. The World Cup winner has also racked up seven yellow cards in the Premier League which means if he gets three more in the next 11 matches he will face a two-game ban to continue his disciplinary issues.<\/p>\n
Even with the absences, Frank is looking for an FA Cup run to do something similar for his team as the Europa League triumph did for Postecoglou’s side last season.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m very, very aware that a cup run will be fantastic. The FA Cup is the biggest cup and most historic cup tournament, not only in the UK and England, but also in the world,” he said. “So we will do everything we can to win that game tomorrow and then progress to the next round and to install belief. That\u2019s the only thing we\u2019re thinking about.<\/p>\n
“We’ll be going full strength. Yeah, all in, because we want to win it. Both the game and the tournament if possible, but it\u2019s one game at a time. We\u2019re facing a very good Villa team. We know that, but we\u2019ll go all in to try to win that game.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tottenham Hotspur boss has made it clear what his intentions are at the north London club and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[89834,73394,403,99,17654,5862],"class_list":{"0":"post-398613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ange-postecoglou","9":"tag-dejan-kulusevski","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-spurs","13":"tag-thomas-frank"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Dejan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1_Dejan-Kulusevski.jpg\")
<\/p>\n