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Team news is out for this weekend’s clash between Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City at Wembley Stadium. The bad news is that Danny Rose will miss the match due to a knock to his calf. The good news is that the injury is short term and that there aren’t any other major injuries to report as Spurs get set to host the presumptive Premier League champions.
TEAM NEWS: Danny Rose (calf) will not be available for Saturday’s match.@KyleLPeters (hamstring) continues his rehabilitation while @HarryWinks (ankle) is currently in Qatar undergoing rehab at Aspetar. pic.twitter.com/biGMxsqR5S
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) April 12, 2018
The absence of Danny Rose is a bit of a bummer, because it means that Spurs will start Ben Davies at left back, and as good as Davies can be he isn’t exactly the most fleet of foot when it comes to defending. He’ll be tasked with keeping up with Raheem Sterling, who is a handful even for the best and fastest of defenders. It probably means that Davies will spend more time sitting deeper trying to defend and less time pushing up the pitch being involved in the offense.
City, thankfully, cannot clinch the Premier League title with a win over Spurs on Saturday unless Manchester United somehow manages to lose to bottom-of-the-table West Bromwich Albion. Which seems unlikely, but whatever.
The other bit of news involves Harry Winks, who Pochettino revealed in a press conference has traveled to Qatar to a sports science center to continue his rehabilitation from a pernicious ankle injury that has mostly kept him out of the action this season.
“He is in Qatar, doing rehab. We will see what happens. We hope after that period he can come back fixing his problem and try again to be in the group training but yes of course we are a little bit concerned about his situation. We are trying to fix his problem and we need to wait now to assess him and we need the news from there but always with the hope that he is going to be good. It’s Impossible now to say or guess what’s going to happen [if he’ll play again this season] but like always it’s about how he is going to react to the treatment and everything, we hope asap he can come back, be in the group, be available for training and happy again. When you are young it’s more difficult and we want him to enjoy football again.”