Mohammed Kudus returned to the story of the London derby with clear memory and blunt honesty. He opened the scoring in the 18th minute, only for Dejan Kulusevski to level before half-time. The contest was 1\u20131 at the break, but West Ham collapsed after the interval, conceding three goals in eight second-half minutes while substitutes watched from the touchline.<\/p>\n
Kudus’ own involvement finished the evening. With Spurs leading 4\u20131, he reacted to a challenge from Micky van de Ven. “I was just fuming that game,” he said, the frustration still clear almost a year later, “and I just reacted straight away.” After sending Van de Ven to the turf and kicking the ball twice while it lay beneath his opponent, Kudus pushed the defender and also made contact with Pape Matar Sarr. The incident ended with a red card.<\/p>\n
The aftermath could have left lingering awkwardness but the two have since moved on. “Whatever happened on the pitch stays on the pitch,” Kudus says. “It\u2019s done and dusted after the game. It\u2019s nice playing with him now. It\u2019s a small world in football. So just try to patch up and move on.”<\/p>\n
At Tottenham a clear defensive core has emerged early under Frank, with Van de Ven and captain Cristian Romero providing a solid base and Kudus operating as a roaming attacking presence. The \u00a355 million summer signing has started life in north London by creating a team-high 12 chances across the opening five weeks of the new Premier League season, more than Lucas Bergvall, Wilson Odobert or Richarlison managed across the entire 2024\u201325 campaign.<\/p>\n
Kudus has set ambitious but straightforward targets. “Winning a trophy.” He added, “We play in almost all the competitions this season; Premier League, Champions League, all the cups in England, so winning a trophy would be a successful season,” and, “Also finishing top four also is a very reasonable challenge for us this season, qualifying for [the] next Champions League.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kudus admits he was fuming after the derby red card; he says it is done and dusted now. This season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3481,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[969,187,438],"tags":[1047,1019,1050],"class_list":["post-3482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-premier-league","category-tottenham-hotspur","category-west-ham-united","tag-champions-league","tag-creative-players","tag-derby-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}