Spurs must continue momentum as they seek Europa League progress

A third game in five days beckons for Jose Mourinho and Tottenham.

After their controversial draw against Newcastle and Carabao Cup victory over Chelsea, Spurs now host Maccabi Haifa in the Europa League play-off round.

The victory over Chelsea has lifted spirits in North London after a typically dogged Jose performance. When finding themselves 1-0 down at half-time, Spurs’ second-half performance was full of determination and effort, which forced the game to penalties.

Mason Mount’s failure to convert the tenth spot-kick of the shootout handed Spurs progression to the quarter-finals. They’ll be thrilled to advance in a fixture that had been demoted in their priorities. The Carabao Cup quarter-finals take place in December, a nice relief for Tottenham’s busy schedule.

Due to their involvement against Chelsea, just 11 players trained at Hotspur Way on Wednesday ahead of the fixture with the Israeli side, summer signing Matt Doherty speaking to the media ahead of the Europa League tie.

The Irish full-back, who departed the competition with Wolves to Sevilla last season, believes his new side can win the trophy this season when speaking ahead of the game.

“Oh yeah, for sure. Obviously Sevilla are a very good team and on that day we didn’t have it in our legs and in our minds to get the win.

I don’t think that even when we get to the group stage, when teams fall out of the Champions League, even if they’re big clubs, I still think we’re good enough to progress all the way in this tournament.”

If you look at this squad now it’s quite exciting and I think we’ll be hard to stop.”

Doherty’s counterpart on the opposite flank, Sergio Reguilon, enjoyed an impressive debut in North London on Tuesday. After making an earlier mistake which led to Timo Werner’s opener, the Spanish international recovered brilliantly by going close to scoring before assisting Erik Lamela to level the tie.

The 23-year-old will likely be replaced by Ben Davies on Thursday night, Jose Mourinho forced to ring the changes.

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After an impressive performance against Newcastle and then a derby win on Tuesday, Spurs have plenty of momentum arriving into the fixture.

Maccabi present a credible threat to Tottenham’s hopes of European football this season, and after such tough fixtures in previous rounds against Lokomotiv Plovdiv and KF Shkendija, they’ll be under no illusions.

With rotation absolutely vital to progression, one man that is well rested is Dele Alli.

The England international is out of favour under Mourinho and when interviewed ahead of the match, he gave no indications as to whether he does feature.

“I cannot confirm Dele’s playing tomorrow but I cannot confirm he’s not playing. We have still training sessions today, we have still decisions to make. The only thing I can say is he’s being very, very professional. I have only respect for him. He’s being very professional, particularly yesterday when the team was preparing for the game and he wasn’t.

It would be perfectly acceptable to have a lack of motivation, even a lack of professionalism for this training session but it was exactly the opposite.

He trained very hard yesterday. He has my respect and the respect of his teammates so it’s possible he plays tomorrow.”

With Monday’s transfer deadline looming, it’s hard to imagine that Dele’s future remains at the club should he not feature. With Mourinho depending on all of his squad to get through this hectic run of games, the players missing out may well be shipped out of North London over the weekend.

A potential reward of £15 million awaits Spurs for reaching the Europa League group stage. With potential deals for Milan Skriniar and Carlos Vinicius rumoured before the deadline, Daniel Levy will be desperate for progress to boost Spurs’ finances.

The boost of their win against Chelsea will undoubtedly help Mourinho inspire his troops on Thursday night. He’ll see this competition as one that his team can realistically win, another strong line-up is expected with Giovani Lo Celso and Harry Winks rested on Tuesday.

Tottenham will hope home advantage makes this the most comfortable of their Europa League fixtures so far, the group stage just one win away.

Tom Hardy will be at The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Thursday night for Tottenham’s fixture with Maccabi Haifa. Follow @ProstInt for all the updates from the ground as they happen.

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