Team news: four out for Southampton-Spurs FA Cup tie

Tottenham Hotspur have a match this Saturday, but it’s not the Premier League — it’s the fourth round of the FA Cup, and they travel to St. Mary’s to play a Southampton side that has won five out of its last seven league matches, including against Spurs on New Year’s Day.

Spurs released their team news today, and it’s the least surprising team news ever — Ben Davies, Harry Kane, and Moussa Sissoko are all still out, and they are joined this time by Harry Winks, who injured his ankle against Norwich mid-week.

Jose Mourinho has also hinted that he’ll play a strong lineup against Southampton tomorrow; the FA Cup is the only competition left in which Spurs have a realistic shot of winning (sorry, Champions League stans). Winks’ injury could mean that Tanguy Ndombele returns to the starting lineup, beside Giovani Lo Celso, in a midfield pairing that is guaranteed to make the Carty Free masthead explode with delight.

Mourinho, meanwhile, appears to be reverting to form a touch, hinting at dissatisfaction over having one less day to prepare for this FA Cup match than Soton, and stating that the Saints “were lucky” in their January 1 win over Spurs.

“[Southampton] are the same, they are really good. They are strong, they found a pattern of play, they play with two strikers. They are strong and apart from the game they lost against Wolves they win, win, win, win,” he said.

”Wolves is one of the teams where you can lose because they are also a very, very good team. What do I expect? I expect a team that is 24 hours fresher than another because they have 24 hours advantage in relation to that. A team with big self-esteem and confidence.

“Again, a very difficult team to play against, we learned there that it is hard and it is going to be hard. There we were a bit unlucky, Southampton were lucky.

”The Harry Kane goal, decisions, injury to Harry, injury to Ndombele at the beginning of the game. We had to fight against so many things that we cannot control.”

After a pretty poor start to the season, Saints are up to ninth in the table under manager Ralph Hassenhuttl and as Tottenham already know, are dangerous at home. The match kicks off at 10 a.m. USA, 3 p.m. UK. It is not televised in the USA or UK, but will be streamed via ESPN+ ($).