Lucas Moura. Still on the Periphery. Will This Be His Season?

It took Lucas Moura 19 seconds to score tonight with Spurs's 2 all draw with Man city. 19 seconds. He is a hero at Spurs already after his champions league hat-trick last season cemented him in the history books of the club forever more. It is also a year on from running riot at Old Trafford getting 2 goals and man of the match to send Mourinho into a rant about how many premier leagues he had won. (More than any other manager in the premiership put together apparently.)


But he has still not cemented his place in the first team. Even with Deli Ali and Song injured and suspended, he was a sub tonight against city. But this was mainly because we played Sissoko as an extra right back to neutralize Sterling. But since his heroics in the champions league semi final he has had a two set backs. The first one was not being selected for the champions league final after single handedly getting them there. Pochettino decided to go for a half fit Kane instead but hindsight is a great thing. The other set back was not being selected for the Brazil side. The champions league carries massive weight in Brazil and scoring a hat trick in a semi final of it should guarantee him a place in the squad but Tite decided to go with Willian instead which was a massive disappointment. It has been 6 years since Lucas has even played 90 minutes for Brazil and that was in a friendly against China.

The feeling at Tottenham is that Moura has not improved since signing. He is still a great player but this was the player who had a little known player called Neymar in his shadow under 20. He had a buyout clause at Sao Paulo of €80 million. Neymar's was €47 million. They roomed together and are really good friends. And there was even talks that Moura was going to end up the pre-madonna. But now Moura is a family man and is the total opposite of what he was tipped to become. PSG signed him for €43 million and they were the envy of most clubs in Europe baying for his signature. He was 19 at the time. He did not start well in Paris and was really inconsistent. He was brilliant some weeks and lost the next. Unai Emery arrived and it looked like he could get the best out of him scoring 17 goals for Emery in his first season with him. But new high profile signings started to arrive and Emery lost trust in the forward. Pochettino came in and took Lucas off PSG's hands with open arms looking to finally realise the potential that he could produce. If there was any manager who could unlock this potential it is him. He has slowly drip fed Moura into the premiership. He signed him at Christmas but did not play him for some time giving him time to acclimatize to the premiership pace.
This is a massive season for Lucas now. And a goal against city will not hurt. A few more like todays and I think we may have a player on our hands. Only time will tell.