Giovani Lo Celso was finally back out on the pitch for Tottenham in the Premier League on Sunday evening at Aston Villa.
Enduring such a stop-start campaign due to injury, the classy midfielder only returned to action for the first time in 2021 on Thursday night away at Dinamo Zagreb as he was introduced off the bench.
Sustaining a hamstring issue seconds after the restart against Leicester City prior to Christmas, Lo Celso has had to wait three months to make his Premier League comeback and it had left Jose Mourinho to make do without one of his key players.
Given the need for three points at Villa Park, the Spurs head coach named the midfielder in his starting XI from the off as he looked to ease the pressure on his shoulders after a horrific week leading up to the game in the Midlands.
Maybe not having the impact on the match his boss would've liked, the ex-Real Betis man made way on 66 minutes for Steven Bergwijn shortly after picking up a yellow card.
Exiting at the far side and made to walk all the way around the pitch to get back to the Spurs bench, Lo Celso was actually at the Holte End when Harry Kane was brought down by Matty Cash in the area.
Rather than carrying on with his walk back towards the bench, the midfielder actually sat down on the advertising hoardings to watch his teammate emphatically score from the penalty spot before getting back to his feet.
He definitely had one of the best seats in the house to see Kane net his 17th league goal of the campaign.
Coming back to fitness at such a crucial time in the season as Spurs look to finish the term with a Champions League place in the bag, Lo Celso will be hoping he has done enough to be in the XI when they travel to Newcastle United in their first game after the international break.
Given the two performances that had come before the encounter at Villa Park, Mourinho admitted after that he was very pleased with the response he got from his players.
"I'm very happy with the result, I'm very happy with the performance, I'm very happy with the attitude," Mourinho told football.london in his post-match press conference.
"I'm not happy with the feeling that if you did it tonight, why you didn't do it 48 hours ago? That match on Thursday will be a scar for a long time.
"It's not going to heal just because we won, but total credit to the players. They were a team. They fought together. They put in the game that honest, that dignity that football players should, should put in every match.
"I think the next challenge for this team is to have a performance like this one, not as a reaction to a bad or a couple of bad results, but to have this reaction, this attitude, this collective state of soul to have these every game.
"We are going to lose matches, we are going to play bad, but to have these human qualities in every match is the next challenge for the team."
