No team in European football has had as awful luck with injuries as Tottenham Hotspur over the past couple of seasons, and now in 2025/26, Spurs can't even blame the continued injury woes on an Ange Postecoglou system that had players run into the ground.
Now, Spurs did come into the 2025/26 campaign with several key injuries lingering from the 2024/25 campaign. Dominic Solanke remains mostly out of commission after an injury aggravation and surgery. Dejan Kulusevski is nowhere close to returning either. And James Maddison may never return for the 2025/26 season after tearing his ACL.
Along the way, several more key players have been out of the lineup. Randal Kolo Muani took ages to get settled with a dead leg and then suffered a jaw injury, Destiny Udogie has been in and out of commission, and even Cristian Romero and Mohammed Kudus have been all important players who picked up knocks.
Destiny Udogie is out
Udogie is the latest significant injury, as the vital starting left back has gone down again. He was a late scratch against Brentford after picking up a slight injury against Newcastle last Tuesday night that was not talked about much. The injury was not even revealed by Thomas Frank until Spurs had already beaten the Bees, too.
Now, according to Frank ahead of Spurs Champions League matchup against Slavia Praha, via the official web site, Destiny Udogie is going to be out for another month with a hamstring injury. He will not be able to return for Spurs until the New Year.
Although Spurs won without Udogie against Brentford, Djed Spence has shown time after time that he is not a true left back, and Spurs are awful against any sort of decent opponent whenever Udogie is not available to stretch the defense and lend some attacking quality and support from the fullback position to the left wingers and striker.
So while Udogie is a defender, the blow is most massive to the Spurs attack. Udogie overlaps and helps orchestrate things with his solid ability on the ball, and he is just about as good as Spence defensively, even if Spence gets more credit for both the memes he makes and for the fact that his defending looks disproportionately great in the face of his horrendous attacking output. Spurs are 100 percent going to miss Udogie over this month of December, but an aggravation of a hamstring injury would be even worse for their chances this season.