Mauricio Pochettino has admitted that he will have to carefully assess the Tottenham Hotspur players who have returned back from World Cup duty before deciding on whether they should be involved this weekend.
Hugo Lloris, Kieran Trippier, Danny Rose, Jan Vertonghen, Toby Alderweireld, Mousa Dembele, Eric Dier, Dele Alli and Harry Kane all reported back for training at Hotspur Way today following their exploits in Russia this summer.
Tottenham travel to Newcastle United on Saturday for their opening Premier League fixture of the campaign with Pochettino insisting that he will not use some of his senior players if it means they risk picking up an injury which could sideline them for a period of time.
Pochettino and his staff will monitor the condition of the nine players and make a decision on Friday if they should travel to St James’ Park.
He told the official Spurs site: “It’s a massive challenge for us after we tried to provide the team a good rest.
“(For) the players that were involved in the World Cup, it was massive and so important to give a very good rest and recovery after a very tough season and World Cup and now it’s a big challenge for us to try to provide them with the best tools to be competitive as soon as possible.
“Always we need to assess them. We will see on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday then Thursday and Friday to take a decision for the team.
“If some players are ready, of course we are going to use them but we are not going to take some risks because sometimes for one game, you lose the players for one month or two months and that is (why it’s) so important to be clever in the decisions that we are going to take.”
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