Team news: five Tottenham players out for season opener vs. Villa

It doesn’t seem quite real, but Tottenham Hotspur plays an actual Premier League match tomorrow. There really hasn’t been time to even process this or start to think about what the team might look like due to the chaos of the transfer window, but we now have a slightly clearer picture of what Spurs’ starting XI will look like after Tottenham released their team news today on social media.

Spurs will be without five players due to a combination of injury and/or suspension. Dele Alli and Ben Davies are both recovering from injuries — Dele from a hamstring tweak he picked up in preseason, and Davies from offseason surgery. Both will miss the match against Villa. Juan Foyth is also injured and will be out until September after injuring ankle ligaments against Bayern Munich in the Audi Cup. Which is fine, since he’s also suspended for the first two matches of the season after picking up a rash red card in Tottenham’s penultimate league match. Joining those three on the sidelines are Son Heung-Min, who is also serving the second of a three-match ban that carries over from last season.

As for the incoming players, new boy Ryan Sessegnon is still recovering from an injury he picked up while at Fulham, and in his press conference Pochettino said that Spurs fans will need to be patient with him, as his impact will come in the medium to long term.

“Ryan Sessegnon is still so young. Ryan is 19 years old and I think he can be potentially a very good player. He doesn’t have that much experience in the Premier League, and was playing like a left winger at Fulham, but maybe Ryan is a little bit behind [Giovani] Lo Celso and [Tanguy] Ndombele in age, they have more experience playing in a top level. Ryan is injured at the moment and maybe he needs three or four weeks out of the group, and we will see how he adapts.”

Spurs’ other deadline day signing, Giovani Lo Celso, is NOT injured, but I’d be shocked if we see him in any capacity apart from a brief late impact substitute, if at all. It’s rare that Pochettino throws his new players directly into a side without some time to learn the system.

There’s some good news, however — Eric Dier and Victor Wanyama have both returned to full training with the squad. That doesn’t mean we’ll see them play tomorrow, but one or both could make the bench.