Romanian boss still backing Vlad Chiriches ahead of international fixtures

Vlad Chiriches hasn't had the best of times lately at Tottenham Hotspur. While he's rarely been great since his arrival from Steaua Bucaresti, he had an absolute horror show last week vs. Besiktas, essentially finding himself at the center of virtually everything that went wrong in that match and single-handedly (lol see what I did there) dropping points for Spurs in the Europa League.

However, don't think that his club form will matter to Romanian national team manager Victor Piturca. Count Piturca among those who doesn't think club form necessarily affects national team performance. He defended Chiriches on Thursday and said he doesn't care how the defender does at Tottenham.

"Well, he has made some mistakes but it's normal to make mistakes and we shouldn't dramatise it, We should not put him against the wall ... I don't care what Chiriches did at Tottenham. What interests me is that he plays very well for the national team."

Vlad is, as we know, the Romanian captain and will no doubt be called upon to lead the Tricolorii in this weekend's Euro 2016 qualification matches against Hungary and Finland. Piturca is naturally hoping that he can shake off his club form and push Romania closer to qualification. Spurs fans are just hoping that he'll use the upcoming matches to get whatever it was that got him possessed by David Luiz out of his system before he's called back into the Tottenham back line.