Thomas Frank’s praise of Pape Matar Sarr after the recent friendly win over Arsenal was well deserved. The Tottenham Hotspur manager said of the midfielder, “He has impressed me I must admit. He has been really good in the last four weeks.
Sarr has had a good pre-season, including in front of goal with a brace against Wycombe coming before his goal vs. Arsenal. It was a great goal, not only to hit a controlled shot from that distance over David Raya but also the awareness to lob the Arsenal keeper early with him so far off his line, and the press to be in that position in the first place.
“Friendly” or not, anytime someone scores against Arsenal, particularly if it’s a winning goal, they deserve credit. Plus, as the first North London Derby played outside the UK, Sarr’s winning goal has given us critical stats like “we are unbeaten in North London Derbies outside the UK” or “we have never conceded a goal vs. Arsenal outside the UK” and “100% of our games vs Arsenal outside of the UK have resulted in us winning trophies”.
The press and forward movement is the particularly interesting part of that passage of play though. We have seen this from Sarr throughout his young Spurs career, though he had started to deliver this more consistently towards the end of the last season. He was excellent in the Europa League final in this capacity, including assisting Brennan Johnson’s winner.
We were light on attacking midfield from a central area even before James Maddison’s injury and Son Heung-min's departure. Dejan Kulusevski has played there with some success but he too is recovering from injury. The rate at which we are loaning players out does suggest something will happen in the transfer market around this situation, too. However, it may be that Thomas Frank has plans for Sarr in a more forward position and it would be great to see how this plays out.
We may find out more against Bayern in the final pre-season game, but by the time our opener against Burnley comes around, it wouldn’t be a shock to see Sarr in a more attacking role. That, of course, is assuming everyone will be required to do just a little bit more defensive work than most other games when we play PSG in the Super Cup.
I still see Sarr more as a box-to-box midfielder but if Frank can develop his attacking play, Sarr could represent another goalscoring, forward-thinking option, of which we desperately need and, in any case, cannot have enough of.