Tottenham Hotspur lost 2-1 at Liverpool on Sunday afternoon.
Pundit Graeme Souness has told Sky Sports that he thinks Tottenham Hotspur ace Christian Eriksen would have rather sat out the trip to Liverpool than played out wide.
Spurs headed up to Anfield on Sunday afternoon, and were looking to build on their midweek thrashing of Crvena zvezda with a positive result against the Premier League leaders.
Tottenham did stun Anfield into silence inside the first minute of the game, as Harry Kane stooped to head past Alisson, reacting first after Son Heung-min’s shot hit the bar.
However, Spurs couldn’t find a second goal, and were made to pay in the second half as Jordan Henderson levelled the game for Liverpool, before Serge Aurier tripped Sadio Mane for a Liverpool penalty.
Mohamed Salah converted from the spot, and Spurs were consigned to a 2-1 defeat, with too many Spurs players coming up short at Anfield.
One of those was midfielder Christian Eriksen, who was surprisingly brought back into the Spurs side despite his poor form this season amid ongoing contract uncertainty.
Eriksen’s deal ends next summer, and it seems that he has one eye on a move away having served up some truly dismal performances this season, with his effort levels seemingly at an all-time low.
However, he was deployed in a right-wing role on Sunday, with Pochettino taking a gamble by tasking him with tracking Liverpool left back Andrew Robertson, which really isn’t the Dane’s forte.
Now, pundit Souness has criticised that decision, believing that Eriksen has little interest in doing that sort of role, and thinks he would have actually rather been left out of the squad entirely than forced to chase Robertson all day.
“You’ve got to play him in the right position,” said Souness. “He was played out wide today because they were concerned about Liverpool’s power in midfield, and he isn’t going to compete with that. So you think you’ll have him in your team, because he’ll come up with a cute pass, he’ll do something clever during the game, that might lead to a goal. What he doesn’t want to do, what he spent most of the game doing, is running back in the wide area defending. He doesn’t want to be chasing the full back, he’s a clever, cute little player, but he has to be in the right team.”
“I think he’s already made his mind up that he’s off. He doesn’t want to play out wide. I think if you asked him today, ‘do you want to play out wide or not at all?’, I think he would have said ‘leave me out of this one’,” he added.
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