TEAM NEWS: Romero could return for West Ham, but Bentancur a doubt

It’s Cuti Romero Day here at Cartilage Free Captain! Just after Tottenham Hotspur announced that they had officially converted his loan from Atalanta into a £47m transfer, there’s team news out in the Evening Standard that suggests that he might be back into contention for Spurs’ trip to West Ham tomorrow.

Dan Kilpatrick writes that Romero, along with Oliver Skipp, returned to full team training on Monday. Romero had also apparently been pushing to return from his slight injury even sooner than this, but team doctors held him back out of caution. That implies that he could feature tomorrow at the London Stadium after missing Spurs’ last two matches.

Having him back for West Ham would be, of course, amazing, but it’s also possible, considering Spurs are now playing two matches a week until infinity, Conte opts to either put him in as a late substitute or holds him out until this weekend’s home match vs. Fulham. On the other hand, if you’re going to rotate your defenders you might want to do that against a recently promoted team, since the match after THAT one is a home tie against Marseille in the Champions League.

In other injury news, in yesterday’s press conference Antonio Conte ruled out Lucas Moura and Bryan Gil from consideration — Lucas with supposed tendonitis and Bryan with MightBeLoanedToValenciaitis. Skippy is also back, though it could be a bit before we see him in action.

“About Romero and Skippy. Today they did the training session with us. For sure we have to wait, to tell that [if] they are completely recovered, but this is a good sign for us, for the player.

“About Lucas, he has this inflammation in his tendon. I hope to recover him very soon, because for sure when I was a player I had a lot of pain in my tendon. You know very well tendon inflammation doesn’t finish in only one week, two weeks. I hope to have him early with us. About Gil... Gil is not still available but in 2-3 days he will start to work and to recover.”

More impactful, however, is the potential status of Rodrigo Bentancur. Lolo picked up what looked like a concussion near the end of the away win over Nottingham Forest, and Kilpatrick notes that his status is questionable. Bentancur’s injury is apparently what led the club to say Pape Matar Sarr would not be heading out on loan this fall, which could imply the injury is more serious than what was let on. If Bentancur can’t play tomorrow, which seems distinctly possible, it almost certainly means a central midfield pairing of Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and Yves Bissouma.