Chadder View: Midfielder Yves Bissouma has half a season to save his Tottenham career
Matthew Chadder is a lifelong Tottenham fan who grew up just down the road from his beloved club in North London. He’s now putting his passion for Spurs into words with a daily fan view for Tottenham News…
It is incredible how quickly things can change in football, and how quickly Tottenham ace Yves Bissouma has managed to change my perspective on him.
On paper, Bissouma is the ideal midfielder to play in Ange Postecoglou’s system, and he proved that at the beginning of the season with a string of wonderful performances.
Unfortunately, football is not played on paper, and incidents on the pitch such as a needless challenge when your team are 2-0 up or a blatant dive when you’re already on a yellow card can very quickly undermine how impressive you are on paper.
When we first signed Bissouma from Brighton, I was overjoyed. He had been one of my favourite midfielders in the Premier League outside of Tottenham since he joined the Seagulls, and I couldn’t wait to see him in a Spurs shirt.
In the end, his first season in the capital was a miss, that is fair to say. However, most of that wasn’t his fault. He was very rarely offered a consistent run in the team and a chance to prove himself, he picked up a medium/long-term injury midway through the campaign and was playing under a relatively disinterested manager which created a chaotic environment.
As a result, I was more than ready to give the midfielder a second chance, a fresh start, and almost treat this season as if it were his first full one with the club. However, if you are looking at the season as a whole this year, you have to say once again it has been a miss for Bissouma, and this time around it is his fault.
That feels crazy to write after the way that he started the campaign, but the reality is that he has been all over the place since his red card at Luton Town in early October, a red card that was completely his fault and almost cost us the match.
I am often understanding of players picking up the odd red card in the heat of the moment, but this one was just completely mindless, and that is putting it kindly. To dive when you have already been booked, and VAR is watching, is just ridiculous. There is no excuse for it.
Since that incident, Bissouma’s performance levels have dropped, and having now picked up a second red card of the season – which marks his third suspension after his one-match ban for amassing five yellow cards – he is set to miss the final four games before he jets off to AFCON, which means the earliest we will see him back is late January.
All of a sudden, you have gone past the halfway point of a season where a player has only performed to a high standard in arguably six or seven games. That is just not good enough, not at any level of the game.
Therefore, Bissouma really needs to step up when he is back and save his season. If he doesn’t, that would be two wasted years at Tottenham, and at that point, it would seriously be worth considering if the 27-year-old is worth keeping around for the long term. As good as he can be, he needs to also prove he is a player we can count on because, at the moment, he is missing more games than he is available for.
A second chance is fair, three is pushing it a little bit.
In other Tottenham news, one player has been singled out for praise by a BBC pundit as he grows stronger by the game.