Sep 17, 2020 | Sushilspurs11
"I have lots of respect for the competition. My record is good. I played the competition twice, I got to the final twice, I won twice. In the Europa League I was never knocked out."
Jose Mourinho - Manager, Tottenham Hotspur
To begin our Europa League campaign of the season we travel to Stadion Lokomotiv in Plovdiv, Bulgaria to face Lokomotiv Plovdiv for our second qualifying round of the competition.
Team News
Giovani Lo Celso is back in training with squad and we trained with our full squad apart from Japhet Tanganga. Beside Tanganga it has been informed that Serge Aurier suffered a little knock in training, keeping these two aside there are no other injury concern within the team.
Asking about the squad travelling to Bulgaria Jose Mourinho told that he has to leave eight players at home as he can only take 18 players with him. He didn’t reveal the name of the players who will not travel to Bulgaria.
Opponents Review
Lokomotiv Plovdiv form: WWWWL
Plovdiv have already played five matches of their home league this season and have picked 9 points out of 15. They reached the second qualifying round of the competition by beating Montenegrin side Iskara.
They are still unbeaten at their home this season winning two out of two and will try their best to maintain their record when they face us.
Manager Brnuno Akrapovic:
“For us this game is very important, not only for us all of Bulgaria, especially Plovdiv,” he said. “It is a special game. We try to do our best in every game.
“It is not so easy tomorrow with how big a club Tottenham are. For us it is important that we play to our style and maybe we can surprise the opponent in some situations.
Player to watch: Dimitar Iliev (Forward)
Jose Mourinho on Plovdiv:
They have played more matches than us. They are in a better physical condition than us. As you say they have played five league matches, played in a cup final a couple of months ago, plus Super Cup, playing already big matches recently against the champions, who they’ve played twice in the last couple of weeks.
It’s normal that they’re in a better condition than us. We are a better team and I hope that the best team means a lot and despite their high motivation and quality as a team and group, I hope that we can beat that.
I repeat only one match, an away match, a knockout match, but we know that the game is very important to us.
Like Jose told the number of matches they have played incomparison to us will put them up in better condition. We just played a single competitive game and are trying to find the perfect starting XI whereas they are already settled.
Predicted Lineup
As Mourinho stated during the press conference, Tanguy Ndombele isn’t ready to start and Kane will feature against Plovdiv here is the possible starting lineup.
Tottenham Hotspur:
Hart; Doherty, Dier, Sanchez, Davies; Winks, Sissoko; Bergwijn, Lucas, Lamela; Kane
Lokomotiv Plovdiv:
Lukov; Petrovic, Almeida, Masoero, Tsvetanov, Vitanov, Salinas, Iliev, Karagaren, Aralica, Ilic
Transfer Latest
We are hoping to complete the double signing from Real Madrid as soon as possible.
Sergio Reguilon: The deal for the highly rated young left back who impressed on loan at Sevilla last season has been completed and the only thing remaining is medical of the player.
The Spanish left back joins for a fee of £27.6m and signs a contract until 2025.
We have agreed to the Real Madrid`s buy back clause into the deal which is reportedly active for 2 years and estimated to be around €45m. We have also agreed Pre-emption clause (if any club make an offer for him in coming years Tottenham must inform Real Madrid about the deal).
Gareth Bale: After so many rumours every season finally it looks like the deal for our former superstar is going to happen.
We are looking to finalise a loan move for Bale to return to north London, with various reports suggesting that the deal is very very close to be completed.
Bale’s agent Jonathan Barnett told on Wednesday morning: “It’s close but not done. It’s a complicated deal.”
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