Tottenham v Chelsea: Carabao Cup fourth round – live! | Football

More from Jose Mourinho’s pre-match chat:

We are going to fight. We don’t have the same conditions as others, but we are going to fight for sure. I don’t like at all to go to the next round without playing. Unfortunately, also for us but especially for Leyton Orient, we didn’t play that game which makes me sad about it. But today we don’t have the same conditions as our opponent, not just the fact we played Sunday and they played Saturday, we play after tomorrow a very important game for our season, both for the sports side and also the economical side. So we don’t have the same ammunition as they have, but yes, we’re going to fight.

Jose Mourinho says “nobody” is going to play at centre-forward – “today we don’t have a nine” – and refuses to talk about Dele Alli: “I’m not going to speak about players who are not here. Are you going to ask Frank, no Thiago Silva, is it because of the mistake he made or another reason?”

A little pre-match news from another Premier League team:

Those teams in full, in totally textual form:

Tottenham Hotspur: Lloris, Alderweireld, Dier, Tanganga, Aurier, Fernandes, Ndombele, Sissoko, Reguilon, Bergwijn, Lamela. Subs: Doherty, Hojbjerg, Sanchez, Kane, Hart, Lucas Moura, Davies.
Chelsea: Mendy, Azpilicueta, Tomori, Zouma, Chilwell, Jorginho, Kovacic, Hudson-Odoi, Mount, Werner, Giroud. Subs: Arrizabalaga, Kante, Barkley, Abraham, James, Havertz, Emerson Palmieri.
Referee: Lee Mason.

PA Media have filed a little team-news reaction update latest:

Dele Alli was again left out of Tottenham’s squad for the Carabao Cup against Chelsea. Alli has only featured in two of Spurs’s six games so far this season as his future at the club looks bleak. Sergio Reguilon was handed a debut as Jose Mourinho made nine changes from the side that drew with Newcastle. Chelsea named a strong line-up as goalkeeper Edouard Mendy was given a debut, while Ben Chilwell made his first start at left-back.

And here’s the Spurs line-up. As trailed, it’s a stronger side than might have been anticipated:

Squad news should be incoming in a couple of minutes, but word on the street is that Tottenham are actually going to field a pretty strong team. We’ll find out just how strong in a short while.

Well, here’s another nice mess they’ve gotten themselves into. To recap: Spurs reached the fourth round of the Carabao Cup after Leyton Orient were thrown out of the competition for testing their players and finding that some of them were Covid-positive, and will now proceed to throw themselves out of the competition. Really, irrespective of the fairness of their punishment (for the record, not very), Orient should be playing this game, one which they might actually relish. Instead here Spurs are, stuck in a competition they can’t compete in, playing a game they don’t need, just 48 hours before Maccabi Haifa turn up for a probably-more-important-on-balance Europa League play-off, with an also-more-important-on-balance league match against Manchester United to follow at the weekend.

“I would like to fight for the Carabao but I don’t think I can,” scowled Jose Mourinho. “The group phase of the Europa League gives us a certain amount of money that for a club like us is very important. I think the EFL made a decision for us. They didn’t even create a problem – they made a decision. So that’s the decision.”

“I know they have a busy week this week but when I analyse Tottenham and know the squad they have, they have a fantastic squad,” says Frank Lampard. “So any squad Jose puts out can be very strong. I think we all know the Carabao Cup, for teams like ourselves and Tottenham that are challenging for the top four and Champions League, the Carabao Cup does have its place but we certainly respect it and every tournament we go in we try to win.”

This evening I fear will be one where neither side wins, but one fails to lose.