Potter: Lamptey and Cucurella combination exciting

Graham Potter has been pleased with Marc Cucurella’s start to life on the south coast.

The head coach is also looking forward to the prospect of the Spaniard being in the same team as Tariq Lamptey, with the right-back on the comeback trail after nine months out injured.

“Tariq is coming back from a long time out with injury so we need to be careful with him and manage expectations a little bit. But certainly both of them [Lamptey and Cucurella] are very competent, exciting, attacking players.  They enable us to attack the sides really well and then it’s about also about how we attack in the middle.

“They certainly give us some attributes which aren’t easy to find, so it is exciting.”

Cucurella won the man of the match award for his performance in the 2-1 win over Leicester, with the 23-year-old having made his debut in the 1-0 victory over Brentford the week before.

“Brentford away isn't an easy fixture at all. You can see the form they're in, so it was a tough away fixture to start off with in the Premier League and then to come and play Leicester – again, good players and a good team – I thought he did really well.  I thought you could see his quality, his personality and attitude. 

“It’s always nice when a new player starts off well, gets settled down well and he did that.  But there were no doubts from our perspective.  We’d followed him for a while.

“And then when he comes in you see the character, you see the guy, the human being and then you think, 'he has a chance'.”