Tottenham Hotspur will battle local rivals Crystal Palace on Sunday afternoon in the Premier League, coming off dreadful losses to Nottingham Forest and Liverpool. Sitting 14th in the league table, it has been far from a banner year thus far for Thomas Frank, who has somehow been even worse in the league than Ange Postecoglou.
For the most part, Spurs have been especially bad in these London games. Aside from lowly West Ham United and Brentford, Tottenham have been spanked by the rest of their local rivals. Arsenal, Chelsea, and even Fulham have embarrassed Tottenham this season.
Here are three Tottenham Hotspur stars who are going to need to step up the most in order for their club to get all three points off of Crystal Palace.
ST Richarlison
Richarlison has six Premier League goals this season despite some of the worst all around play at the striker position of any actually known player in European football. The Brazilian can cook up moments of magic, but, more often, he is a ghost who bumbles himself into goals beautifully set up by Mohammed Kudus and Randal Kolo Muani.
Going up against the center back pair of Marc Guehi and Maxence Lacroix, Richarlison is going to have to do a lot more running into the channels and creating. He is maybe going to get a couple of good chances to score, and he has to start making better use of them.
ST Randal Kolo Muani
It is unclear if Tottenham manager Thomas Farnk will roll with one or two strikers, but Randal Kolo Muani can play either as a No. 9 or a left winger inverting heavily to add goals, given Spurs are not getting much production from that position. Oliver Glasner's Crystal Palace defense is tough, but Kolo Muani shredded an even tougher defense against parent club PSG in the Champions League. if Spurs can feed him the chances and work with him (looking at you, Richy), Kolo Muani can lead them to a big W on Sunday.
CB Kevin Danso
With Cristian Romero out due to a rather ticky tack suspension from the Liverpool game, Kevin Danso is going to be the man Jean-Philippe Mateta and the Crystal Palace front line target. Big Danso against Big Philippe is going to be one heck of a battle, and Tottenham had better hope it ends up being a stalemate, which is, technically speaking then, a win for the Austrian center back. Avoiding mistakes on the ball, even if fed by the incompetent Guglielmo Vicario, is the biggest key here. Don't give Mateta and the Palace press any free wins.