Mauricio Pochettino has said he is yet to decide whether Tottenham’s Argentinian contingent – Juan Foyth, Paulo Gazzaniga and Erik Lamela – will play a part in Saturday’s London derby against Chelsea.
The trio only returned to London in the early hours of Thursday morning after playing for Argentina against Mexico, a match in which Gazzaniga made his senior international debut and Lamela provided an assist in the 2-0 victory.
Earlier this week, reports suggested all three players were doubtful for this weekend’s Premier League clash with Chelsea at Wembley, but that was when they were expected to return to England on Friday.
With an extra day of recovery and preparation, there is now a chance they could feature against the Blues. But Pochettino is still unsure whether they will be ready.
“Still I cannot say nothing because we are assessing the players. They arrived today so early – 6 o’clock in the morning they landed here in London,” Pochettino said in his press conference on Thursday (via football.london).
“It’s true they don’t rest properly in the last few days, but still today for the game we’re going to try to take the best decisions to try to be close to winning the game. That is in the end our objective.”
Hugo Lloris is fit so Paulo Gazzaniga won’t feature anyway, and Juan Foyth’s potential absence is offset by Jan Vertonghen’s return to full training – the Belgian is in contention to start.
Despite his fine form, we haven’t included in Lamela in our predicted XI to face Chelsea – check it out here.
