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Add as preferred source on Google<\/span> <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\nTottenham fans have spent most of this season telling themselves that Conor Gallagher, Richarlison, and Rodrigo Bentancur were the problem. Sunday night at Villa Park, they were the answer.<\/strong><\/p>\n Tottenham needed three points from one of the most difficult away trips remaining on the fixture list. A fifth-place Aston Villa side, still chasing Champions League football, with a home crowd behind them and a run of form that made them heavy favourites. <\/p>\n Spurs, sitting 18th and staring down the very real prospect of their first relegation since 1977, had to go there and win. And the players who delivered it were precisely the ones many of us had been loudest about moving on.<\/p>\n Gallagher opened the scoring after 12 minutes with a composed finish on the edge of the box, controlling a clearance and driving the ball into the bottom corner in what turned out to be his first goal for the club. <\/p>\n Richarlison headed in the second before the half-hour mark, finishing a brilliant Mathys Tel cross to double the advantage in the 25th minute. Emiliano Buendia pulled one back deep in stoppage time, but it was little more than a consolation. Spurs held on for a 2-1 win that lifts them above West Ham and out of the relegation zone for the first time in almost a month.<\/p>\n Then there was Bentancur, equally brilliant in the middle of the park, winning four of his six ground duels and making two tackles and two interceptions before being replaced in the second half. Roberto De Zerbi confirmed afterwards it was purely fatigue that forced the change.<\/p>\n Of the three, Gallagher had probably attracted the harshest criticism. Signed from Atletico Madrid for \u00a335m in January, he arrived with the fanbase already divided. The Chelsea connection never helped, and his early performances did little to win sceptics over. In a home defeat to Fulham in March, he managed a passing accuracy of just 74 per cent, lost possession with 12 of his 37 touches, and won just one of four ground duels.<\/p>\n The social media response was immediate and merciless, with supporters declaring him the worst signing in the club\u2019s history. A former Spurs scout was quoted suggesting Tottenham could cash in on him at the end of the season, barely four months after his arrival.<\/p>\n The criticism of Richarlison has been longer and more layered. He has been at the club since 2022, signed for \u00a360m from Everton, and the gap between expectation and reality has never quite closed. <\/p>\n There have been brilliant moments, most recently a last-minute equaliser against Liverpool in March that kept Spurs\u2019 survival hopes alive, but they have always been punctuated by stretches of inconsistency and injury absences. Ahead of this week, there were serious conversations in the fanbase about whether he had any meaningful role to play beyond this season regardless of which division they ended up in.<\/p>\n Bentancur\u2019s situation is slightly different. His own season was derailed early by injury, and his absence during Tottenham\u2019s bleakest run contributed to the structural collapse in midfield that left De Zerbi with so little to work with when he arrived in April. <\/p>\n But even allowing for that context, the noise around all three players has been consistent and pointed in the same direction: time to move on.<\/p>\n De Zerbi summed up Gallagher perfectly after the final whistle. \u201cWhen he plays well, we have 12 players because he is amazing.\u201d That reads less like a manager managing his squad\u2019s confidence and more like a coach who has genuinely identified something in a player others had given up on.<\/p>\n The question worth sitting with is whether De Zerbi saw something that Igor Tudor, Thomas Frank, and the rotating cast of coaches before them did not, or whether Gallagher simply needed the right system and the right moment to show what he can do.<\/p>\n Richarlison\u2019s header was, in isolation, straightforward. Tel did the hard work with a precise cross from the right, and the finish itself was simple. But his role in the first half was much more than the goal. <\/p>\n He pressed relentlessly, caused Ian Maatsen problems repeatedly on Villa\u2019s left side, and held the line together in a way that his critics would not have anticipated after a difficult few months. He now has 10 goals and five assists for the season, which is not the return of a passenger.<\/p>\n And Bentancur, when he is fit and functioning, remains one of the best midfielders at this level at winning the ball back in tight areas. His reemergence after injury could prove to be the difference between Spurs staying in the top flight and going down, and Sunday was another reminder of how different this team looks with him in it.<\/p>\n There is an honest question here, and it is one worth asking without being precious about it. Tottenham supporters have been through an extraordinarily difficult season. The relegation fight is real, with Opta giving West Ham a 75 per cent chance of going down after their 3-0 defeat to Brentford left the door open for Spurs to take 17th. Three games remain. One wrong result and the conversation changes again. The pressure has been immense, and it was inevitable that some of it would land on individuals.<\/p>\n But the volume and certainty of the criticism directed at these three players over the last few months has not always reflected how complicated the situation is. Gallagher came into a club in the middle of a managerial crisis, with a squad depleted by injuries to Xavi Simons, Dejan Kulusevski, James Maddison, and Dominic Solanke.<\/p>\n Tottenham had gone 14 league games without a win before their victory over Wolves last week. Richarlison had, by any honest measure, kept Spurs\u2019 head above water on several occasions this season, including that Liverpool equaliser. Bentancur had barely played due to injury. Holding players to peak-form standards in a collapsing system is not analysis; it is frustration finding a target.<\/p>\n Three games remain: Leeds at home on Monday, Chelsea away, then the final-day fixture. Leeds arrive next week in decent form themselves, having climbed to 14th and seven points clear of the drop. It will not be comfortable. Chelsea away is, on paper, the match of the run-in, and few would back Spurs to take anything there. Which means that Monday\u2019s result at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium carries the weight of the entire survival bid.<\/p>\n Whether Gallagher, Richarlison, and Bentancur can reproduce Sunday\u2019s levels across three games in nine days is a genuine question. The physical toll is real. Bentancur was already taken off at Villa Park, and Richarlison came off for Pape Matar Sarr with time to run. <\/p>\n But the performance at Villa Park showed something that had been absent for long stretches of this campaign: a group of players with something to prove, playing for a manager who appears to genuinely believe in them.<\/p>\n Of course, one win does not settle anything. It remains to be seen whether this is the turning point or simply a bright moment in an otherwise grim season. But if Spurs do stay up, the narrative will matter. The players we were most ready to discard may well be the ones who saved the club\u2019s top-flight status, and that is a story worth reflecting on honestly when the dust settles.<\/p>\n![\"FBL-ENG-PR-ASTON](\"https:\/\/www.spurs-web.com\/static\/uploads\/1\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-2273816850-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/div>The case against Tottenham trio was loud and did not come from nowhere<\/h2>\n
What Sunday at Villa Park actually showed us about Gallagher, Richarlison, and Bentancur<\/h2>\n
What does it say about how quickly Spurs fans turn on our own?<\/h2>\n
Can Gallagher, Richarlison, and Bentancur do it again across three games in nine days?<\/h2>\n