The 29-year-old made a brave decision to leave Tottenham Hotspur last summer.
Kieran Trippier has intimated that he has become a better player since leaving Tottenham Hotspur last summer.
The England right-back called time on a four-year stint in North London to join Atletico Madrid in a £20 million deal [The Guardian].
Considering Tottenham had reached the Champions League final a couple of months before his exit, it was a strange decision by Trippier.
But the 29-year-old has gone from an error-prone and slightly unreliable defender under Mauricio Pochettino at Spurs to being a regular fixture in a Diego Simeone-drilled Atleti side famed for its defending, evident by how they knocked Liverpool out of the Champions League this month.
The former Burnley star was always a very useful attacking asset, by virtue of the fact he has 18 assists to his name in the Premier League, but Trippier reckons that he’s improved as a defender since leaving.
He told BBC’s Football Focus: “At the Premier League at times I was too eager to get forward. I feel like my understanding of when to get forward, when to defend, the positioning, I’ve worked a lot defensively in my time of being here.”
If we’re honest, Tottenham have missed Trippier.
Pochettino, who was sacked in November, failed to sign a replacement right-back last summer and started the season with Serge Aurier in what was perhaps a poor decision.
The Ivorian isn’t a bad player, but he’s by no means brilliant either and there’s a reason why Trippier invariably played ahead of him in England, because he’s better.
Right-back is a position that Jose Mourinho badly needs to address in the summer.
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