Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino has admitted he feels the club got ‘lucky’ when it came to Kieran Trippier’s rise following the departure of Kyle Walker to Manchester City.
Speaking to football.london as he met with the media this week, our gaffer explained that regardless of all the work that goes into transfer deals, scouting and making assessments on how to best spend your cash in football, ‘sometimes you’re lucky’ and a deal comes off better than you expected, with the equal and opposite caveat that some deals fall flat on their faces when you employ hindsight.
Our former Burnley fan is certainly in the former camp though and having biding his time the 27-year-old has certainly announced himself now, staring for both club and country as he impressed whilst on duty for England at the World Cup out in Russia.
Having been giving additional time off, he made his first appearance of the 2018/19 campaign in the 3-1 victory over Fulham and he found the net on the day with what is quickly becoming a trademarked setpiece.
Not bad for a reported £3.5million in today’s game and with him slowly adding goals to his game, he has been second only to Walker for assists from the fullback spot (5 a season) over the last two years.
“Sometimes things happen, sometimes you’re lucky and of course when we signed Kieran, we were trying to challenge Walker. We improve them and give them better tools to improve, but sometimes we need luck too and he deserves the credit because he made the effort to improve and step up his career.”
Some call it luck, some call it hard work – call it what you want, I’ll just say well done that man and keep it up.