Tottenham Hotspur remain hopeful the Carabao Cup will be their method of ending the club’s 16-year trophy drought, returning to the competition on Thursday with a quarter-final clash against Manchester United.
Spurs and their rivals will do battle in North London, hoping to be named alongside Arsenal, Liverpool and Newcastle United amongst the last four in contention for the first piece of silverware of the 2024/25 campaign.
Before injury challenges had arose, Ange Postecoglou had already hyped up his chances of adding to a trophy to the cabinet.
“I’ll correct myself, I don’t usually win things, I always win things in my second year, nothing’s changed,” he declared, then clapped back to a repeat follow-up question: “Well I’ve just said it now. I don’t say things unless I believe them.”
Looking to ruin this notion will be Ruben Amorim, who took over at Man United last month and has set to work on installing his own ideas. Confidence will be high following their 2-1 Premier League win against bitter rivals Man City.
Postecoglou recognises how testing this fixture is going to be, and so the first Tottenham team selection hints are suggesting he will name as strong a line-up as possible.
The club’s official pre-match graphic features all three of Dominic Solanke, Radu Dragusin and Archie Gray at the forefront:
The former returned to the starting XI for last weekend’s 5-0 win at Southampton, and as a striker will no doubt have been unhappy to miss out on the goals. He has had to put up with injuries so far this term so Postecoglou will have to decide whether Solanke does actually start, especially with former club Liverpool visiting in the league on Sunday.
Dragusin also posted his own match graphic to his personal Instagram story, further hinting towards his involvement on Thursday night.
In truth, the manager has little alternative with both Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven likely to be ruled out until January, as was confirmed on Wednesday.
The Romanian and 18-year-old Gray have started the club’s last two matches as a makeshift central defensive pairing, conceding in the 1-1 Europa League draw with Rangers before keeping a clean sheet at St. Mary’s.
On top of Romero and Van de Ven, Spurs have been hit with a further seven absentees to bring their total to nine at present.
