This is not the season Xavi Simons was expecting at Tottenham Hotspur

When Xavi Simons joined Tottenham Hotspur at the finish of final summer season, the hope was that he may star on nights like tonight.

A Champions League last-16 second leg, at house beneath lights, towards Atletico Madrid, is an enormous event by any measure. When Simons signed for Tottenham from RB Leipzig for £51.8million ($70m at the time)it felt as if each events may need an eye fixed on one thing like this six months down the line.

For Simons, it was an opportunity to point out the world he was as good as his reputation suggested. Simons had reached this stage of the Champions League with Leipzig in 2024, after they have been knocked out by eventual champions Real Madrid. He featured in Leipzig’s depressing Champions League marketing campaign the following yr, too, after they misplaced seven of their eight league-phase video games. But each participant desires to shine on this competitors and at Spurs, he would have one other likelihood.

For Tottenham, Simons supplied the high-quality inventive expertise that was wanted as James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski confronted prolonged lay-offs. Everyone knew that Spurs wanted a little bit of stardust, a little bit of magic, and Simons was seen as the man to ship it.

And but this season has taken Tottenham in instructions that nobody may have anticipated. This week, they’ve one traditionally important sport and one comparatively trivial one. Their weird actuality is that the one that basically issues is towards Nottingham Forest in the Premier League, sixteenth towards seventeenth in the desk. To name Sunday’s sport a ‘six-pointer’ barely does it justice.

The solely factor that issues for Spurs over the subsequent two months is staying on the prime flight. In current weeks, Simons has discovered himself much less integral than many anticipated to their scrap to remain up.

Simons has not began any of Tottenham’s final three video games — the chaotic defeats to Crystal Palace and Atletico Madrid or the creditable draw at Anfield. He has gone from being the main gentle of the group at the flip of the yr to the fringes once more. It is sufficient to make you marvel what head coach Igor Tudor does or does not see in him, for the group to be seemingly missing in technical high quality and for Simons, the most technically gifted of their match and accessible gamers, to be again on the bench.

This is why Wednesday’s sport towards Atletico may very well be important, simply not in the approach that anybody would have thought. If Tudor decides he desires to relaxation and rotate, to guard his most vital gamers for the Forest sport, then that might imply Simons comes again in. It could be his first begin since he was hooked one hour into the 2-1 defeat at Fulham on March 1. Even if Spurs’ slim probabilities of progress to the quarter-finals are now not at the forefront of everybody’s minds, it may nonetheless be an opportunity for Simons to remind everybody how good he might be.

This is an uncommon place for a proficient participant with a glistening popularity. Even extra curiously, throughout the remaining weeks of Thomas Frank’s tenure, Simons seemed to be settling into this group and into English soccer. Amid all the distress of January and February, he was in all probability Spurs’ finest participant.

No one would dispute that Simons started the season slowly. He was out and in of the group in the opening months. He did not play a full 90 minutes in the Premier League till December, Spurs’ 2-0 win towards Brentford, when he also scored his first goal for the club. That was Spurs’ final house league win.

It felt like one thing had clicked for Simons. He began 4 video games on the spin, a run that ended with an unlucky purple card towards Liverpool. After his suspension, he got here again into the group and began the subsequent 11 video games in a row, typically enjoying as the No 10 in Frank’s 4-2-3-1 system.

It was throughout the course of that run that Simons’ laborious work lastly appeared to be paying off. He got here to England with a sizeable entourage, together with a energy and conditioning coach who even moved in with him, a private coach, a mindset coach and a video analyst. He had been working laborious in the fitness center to equip himself for the bodily problem.

Simons’ favourite movie is Interstellar and earlier than each sport, he would take heed to Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack to get himself in the zone. At the begin of this yr, there have been moments when it felt like an apt alternative; that one man’s heroic against-the-odds quest to save lots of humanity would possibly encourage Simons’ heroic against-the-odds quest to save lots of Spurs.

Xavi Simons and his Spurs team-mates react to defeat towards Arsenal (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

Simons had been bettering, operating the sport in January’s 2-0 win towards Borussia Dortmund. And when Manchester City got here to Tottenham on February 1, simons was electric. Spurs have been 2-0 down at the break however Simons dragged them again into it virtually by himself, making Dominic Solanke’s first objective, creating probabilities for others, and scrapping for each unfastened ball, at all times keen to place his physique on the line. Suddenly the bodily calls for of the English sport now not seemed past it. The crowd responded nicely to Simons’ angle and his team-mates did too.

But Simons was the finest participant on a dysfunctional group and 10 days after that sport, Frank was sacked. Initially, it appeared Tudor, along with his concentrate on health and self-discipline, may be good for Simons, and he began Tudor’s first two video games, towards Arsenal and Fulham. But Simons has been on the bench for the subsequent three, getting 17 minutes towards Crystal Palace and simply eight towards Atletico Madrid.

Before the journey to Liverpool, Tudor was requested about benching Simons and defined that he selected what he thinks “is best for the club”, and insisted that Simons was “a good player, an important player”. But Simons was on the bench once more, with Tudor preferring the legs of Mathys Tel and Souza out huge in his 4-4-2. It felt like a major choice, on condition that this was solely Souza’s second begin for Spurs. Simons bought the final 35 minutes, wanting initially rusty, then rising into the sport late on.

But if Tudor has landed on a system and a method, a direct bodily 4-4-2 method, then the place does that go away Simons? If his precedence is pace out huge and selfless operating, does he suppose he can get extra of that than different individuals? There are nonetheless eight big league video games left and Simons will definitely have a task. He can do issues no different match Spurs participant can do.

It may be that on Wednesday night time in the Champions League, Simons will get to make his case once more. If he can replicate how he performed towards Dortmund, it may nonetheless be a superb night time for him. The actual problem will likely be getting again into the group for the Forest sport on Sunday — a situation few of us noticed panning out again when Simons arrived.