Thu 26 November 2020, 11:23
Tottenham HotspurJose Mourinho looks ahead to this evening's UEFA Europa League Group J, Matchday Four against Ludogorets at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (8pm).
1 - Toby
First up, an update on Toby Alderweireld, who was injured against City, but thankfully it appears the problem isn’t as bad as first feared...
Jose: “The immediate impact was, in my eyes and with my experience, a month, but at this moment, after the work the medical department have done, it looks like it’s more between two and four weeks than a month. So, after the bad news, positive news. He’s a great professional and I know that he’s going to be very dedicated and try to recover as soon as possible. Of course, no chance to play the next two, three matches, but hypothetically he can be back soon, and, honestly, he was playing his best football since I arrived, so we’ll get him back as soon as possible."
2 - Team news
Jose gave a further update on Matt Doherty - available again after testing positive for coronavirus on 11 November - and Erik Lamela...
Jose: “Matt's back, by the clinical and the legal point view of view he’s fine, he’s ready. Is he ready to start a match? We don’t know. Obviously, I still have some work to do with him to understand that, but to participate in the game, playing or being on the bench, is good, because in the Europa League we can have 12 players on the bench, so 12 plus 11 is 23 and it’s good to have him in the squad of 23. Lamela still has his Achilles problem, apart from that, everyone is good.”
3 - Japhet
With Toby out and Joe Rodon ineligible for the group stage of the Europa League, it was put to Jose in his press conference if he’d considered Japhet Tanganga for a central defensive role...
Jose: “For me, he's a full-back. Can he play centre-back? Yes, he can, of course he can, and he will if we need and we will need. He can play centre-back. But, for me, in the context of what high level football is and especially what the Premier League is, I see him more as a multi-functional defensive player, but I see him more as a full-back.”
4 - Ludogorets
What does Jose expect from our opponents - Bulgarian champions and league leaders - this evening?
Jose: “First of all, it’s important to make it clear – and I’ve done this already with my players, which is the most important thing – that some information is coming about problems (with the Ludogorets squad) and it’s not true. We have the list of the players coming and from the first 11 that played against us (in Razgrad on 5 November) only two players are not coming, and at the same time, they’ve recovered a couple of others who were injured against us. They are playing with their best team. It’s a team with zero points (so far in the group) but all the games were very close. We know they are not a bad team. We had a bad experience, and sometimes it’s good to have a bad experience not to make the same mistakes. We had that bad experience in Antwerp where attitudes weren’t strong enough to have a result and we need that, because this is a group where normally you are going to need many points to qualify. Sometimes when you split points between teams it’s different, but in this case, if one team isn’t winning many points, it means the other three are going to compete for two positions, and that’s not easy.”
5 - No repeats...
Since Everton on the opening day of the season, we've won 11 and lost one of 15 games, indeed, we've won eight and lost one of our last 10. That one? Antwerp in the Europa League...
Jose: "Experience says that when you are on a good run, the bad day is always going to arrive. I always used to say I want that bad day to arrive not because you had a bad day, but because the opponent was much better and they beat you, not because of the way you approached the game. Of course, we want to win, we hope we are going to win, we believe we are going to win, but if we have problems, I want these problems to be created by Ludogorets, not to be created by our own attitude.”
