Tottenham fans may all start coming to the same realisation sooner or later, and some of them may have come to it already. Despite the fact that Kieran Trippier was far from a fan favourite last season, life was undoubtedly better with him bombing down the right flank.
The England defender is one of those who departed the club over the course of the summer, and it doesn’t make sense that he was allowed to leave when you look at the club’s current options at right-back now. Serge Aurier is woeful, Kyle Walker-Peters seems to lack Mauricio Pochettino trust, and Juan Foyth is still adapting to the role.
Of those three, none of them seem up to the role as the club’s number one choice on the right of the back four, but Trippier certainly was, and keeping the World Cup hero on for one more season whilst developing both Foyth and Walker-Peters is now looking like it would have been the best option.
Unfortunately, that simply hasn’t been the case. The defender left North London for Atletico Madrid over the summer in a £20m move (BBC) and he’s now thriving at the club under the management of Diego Simeone, recently starring in his first-ever Madrid derby last weekend.
However, the club that Trippier left behind is becoming more and more shambolic as the days and the matches go by, with the 7-2 thrashing at the hands of Bayern Munich set to live long in the memory of the fans, although would it have been quite so emphatic if Trippier was still there is up in the air.
The main downfall on the night was Serge Aurier’s inability to keep his namesake, Serge Gnabry, at bay as the ex-Arsenal man bagged four. Trippier wouldn’t have been able to completely stop the rut, but surely he’d have done a much better job than Aurier did.
Indeed, the defender is now plying his trade out in Spain as Spurs wonder what could have been. Whilst it certainly doesn’t the help Spurs now, much like when they sold Kyle Walker, it seems that the Lilywhites really didn’t realise what they had until it was gone.