Djed Spence ‘mind-bendingly stupid’ as ‘shocking’ Tottenham footage emerges
Djed Spence left Thomas Frank with his heart in his mouth at Tottenham’s training session at the Kai Tok Stadium on Tuesday.
Spurs are currently in Hong Kong preparing to face Arsenal at the 50,000-seater stadium.
It’ll be the first time the two North London rivals have faced off against each other on foreign soil and, understandably, it’s attracting a lot of attention.
Thousands of football fans packed into the Kai Tak Stadium to watch Spurs hold an open training session on 29 July.
And those who managed to gain attendance witnessed a bit more intensity than they were probably expecting.
Video clip shows Porro being cut down by Spence
As Spurs players faced off in a training match, Pedro Porro was left in a great deal of pain when he was sliced down to the ground by Spence.
The 24-year-old former Leeds loanee lunged in on his Spanish teammate, completely missing the ball, before running away as though nothing had happened.
Porro was left in a heap on the ground.
It took a good few seconds for the former Sporting CP full-back to get back up onto his feet, but once he did, you could tell that he was in a lot of pain.
Tottenham’s injury record has been bad enough in the last couple of years without players now clattering through one another in training.
Ange Postecoglou was widely criticised for pushing his players too hard despite having injury crisis after injury crisis at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
It remains to be seen whether or not Frank will oversee an improvement in that area of his job, but based on what Spurs fans saw in Hong Kong on Tuesday, they’re not confident.
One Tottenham fan even accused Spence of deliberately trying to hurt Porro, while another couldn’t believe how the former England Under-21 international ran off afterwards like nothing had happened.
Porro v Spence – what do the stats say?
Porro is an out-and-out right-back and made 51 appearances across all competitions last season – almost exclusively in that position – for Postecoglou.
Spence, on the other hand, can play on both sides of the pitch, with stats showing last term he played 24 times at left-back and nine times on the right.
- Spence comes out on top in winning aerial and defensive duels and carrying the ball forward.
- Porro is superior when it comes to crossing the ball into the box, supplying assists and making passes up the pitch.
- Porro narrowly beats Spence for possession won.
Porro is basically an attacker due to the way he plays.
Last term, the Spaniard assisted nine goals in all competitions and scored four himself.
Spence’s offensive stats are lacking in comparison. However, he still contributed two goals and three assists.
| Minutes played | Goal contributions | Goal contributions per 90 minutes of game time | |
| Porro | 4,130 | 13 | 0.28 |
| Spence | 2,419 | 5 | 0.18 |
Here, it can be seen that while Porro is more effective in the attack, Spence doesn’t lag too far behind when it comes to goals and assists per 90 minutes of game time.
Frank is unlikely to have been too happy with Spence’s challenge on Porro in Hong Kong.
However, incidents like that will no doubt happen behind closed doors all the time and, if anything, the Dane might have been quietly impressed by the application shown by Spence.
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