Pedro Porro managed to get a good amount of minutes off the bench in Tottenham Hotspur's 2-0 win over Chelsea this past Premier League weekend, and while that does not rule out Archie Gray coming back to the right back position, Spurs fans hope that they won't have to see the young midfielder out of position too much for the rest of the season.
Gray started again on Saturday at Stamford Bridge against Chelsea, and he played well enough to help Spurs notch a clean sheet. Although Gray was back in the midfield last Monday night when they defeated Coventry 3-1, he has played a lot more at right back this season than in the midfield due to lingering fitness and injury issues to Porro since his triumphant World Cup.
Although Gray was honestly a liability at right back when he first started getting games at the position, the England youth international slowly but surely became a quality option there, most notably having a fantastic game against Manchester United not too long ago.
Archie Gray can become even scarier in midfield
Archie Gray has to translate the lessons he learned from playing right back to help his development in the midfield, which is obviously the long term play of how he will fit the Lilywhites. He became a lot better at driving the ball forward, eating up space, and having that verve to get up the pitch and focus on getting the ball into the box.
It's actually not as easy as it looks to do that from a wide position, but by the time Spurs faced Manchester United, Gray was pretty close to an expert at getting the ball in the box and taking up dangerous positions there, too.
That's something that we did not see much from Gray in the midfield even last season when he was playing his best football for the team, and it will be wonderful to see more examples of that when Gray does get starts as an 8 again.
And then defensively, Gray has always been a positive as a midfielder, but it felt like he really stepped up his aggression, anticipation of the ball, and overall ball winning quality as a right back. Gray being able to bring that to the table in midfield to an even greater extent will really give Tottenham Hotspur an embarrassment of riches at breaking up play and quickly turning it into dangerous offensive possession.
Add us as a preferred source on Google