Saturday’s Premier League opener against Brentford couldn’t have gone worse for Tottenham Hotspur, but we now have some further details about what the lineup for tomorrow’s League Cup second round match against Charlton may look like. Roberto De Zerbi just finished his pre-match press conference and confirmed that while Dominic Solanke is available to start tomorrow and Micky van de Ven and Pedro Porro will both be on the bench, Mohammed Kudus and James Maddison will both miss the match due to injury.
It’s still an open question as to whether this morning’s new signing Savio will be ready to play or not.
“Micky van de Ven comes on the bench. Pedro Porro will be on the bench. Solanke is available to play. Savio I don’t know if he’s ready to play if everything is ok to play or on the bench. Great news to have Van de Ven and Pedro Porro. Kudus is not ready yet. Maddison suffered a small injury in the shoulder.”
Poor James Maddison — the guy just can’t catch a break. After missing an entire year due to an ACL injury, he came back on Saturday and promptly fell on his shoulder, injuring it. I’m taking solace in the fact that RDZ called it a “small injury” but I’m also not counting on him for a while.
It means, once again, Spurs will go into their next match with a dearth of creativity at the 10 spot and a lot of questions. Charlton just beat West Ham at the Olympic Stadium at the weekend in the Championship, so they’re obviously not pushovers. But there’s a decent chance Spurs could give some players that came off the bench on Saturday like Rodrigo Bentancur and Mateus Fernandes, and others like Kevin Danso, Souza, and Luca Williams-Barnett a chance, at least in reserve.
But maybe not! De Zerbi also hinted that he’s treating the Charlton match the way he would a Premier League fixture, considering Spurs are still behind in their preparations for the season.
“For me it’s like the Premier League. We are not in the position to make differences. We need to get used to winning the matches. We have to change the mood. We can because we already did last season. Six games, three wins, two draws and one defeat to Chelsea. I heard last season we can’t win the game because the last game we won was in December. I think the environment has to change, the players inside and the people inside have to change this mentality. It’s a challenge. When I said we have to become a team it’s about this. The quality of the players we had enough of against Brentford to do much better.”
Elsewhere, De Zerbi spoke a little about new signing Savio and what he can bring to the team, suggesting he hopes he’ll contribute a bunch of goals.
“In terms of one-to-one, he’s one of the best players, can play on either side. If you analyse the best wingers in the world they score 10-15 goals a season and he has the qualities. Maybe it’s a habit and he had to get the habit. We need to increase the chances to score. The best teams score lots of goals.”
Tottenham vs. Charlton is the first home match of the season for Spurs. They kick off Wednesday at 2:45 p.m. ET / 7:45 p.m. BST.
