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Opinion: Why Lucas Moura is struggling for minutes under Mauricio Pochettino

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Lucas Moura firing Tottenham into last season’s Champions League final appears to have cursed his career. The 27-year-old scored a hat-trick as Spurs pulled off a miracle comeback against Ajax in April’s semi-final second leg, but he’s struggled to get a run of games ever since.

Mauricio Pochettino dropped Lucas for the final and has handed him only six starts from 16 this season. The Brazilian international has racked up less than 600 minutes of football in all competitions, but do WhoScored’s player statistics reveal why?

Lucas has scored & created two goals in 10 league appearances this season, the last of which came in August. He has averaged a chance created every 80 minutes, whipped in just one cross, had 11 unsuccessful touches and been dispossessed 12 times.

The 27-year-old also misplaces 20% of his 13.7 passes-per-game which means  Lucas loses the ball every 15 minutes on average. And with the majority of his shots being blocked or missing the target (63%), coupled with the Brazilian only having a 46% success rate with tackles, Pochettino may be wanting more before playing him regularly.

Does Lucas Moura get into the strongest current Tottenham XI?

Yes! Of course!

No way!

Since August, Lucas has made just two league starts. He’s been an unused substitute twice and averages 27 minutes on the pitch when Pochettino does give him the nod – hardly enough time to make a telling impact. Whether he’ll get more opportunities after the international break remains to be seen.

Read Crippy Cooke’s previous article

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Sports journalist who is an avid football fan, enjoys debunking transfer rumours, loves to write pieces about players out in the cold and takes a large amount of pride getting a predicted XI 100% correct.