Leicester will be without top scorer Jamie Vardy after the England global had surgery to treat a minor groin complaint.
Advertisement
Mark Lawrenson is tipping Tottenham Hotspur to secure a 2-0 victory over Leicester City at White Hart Lane on Sunday and book their place in the fourth round of the FA Cup.
“Today (Thursday) Jamie is working with the physio and he should be okay for the league game (against Tottenham)”.
“I didn’t know him before the friendly match against Birmingham”, he said. “If not – Aston Villa”.
Pochettino praised the job Ranieri has done this season and said as a player he nearly left Espanyol to join the Italian, when he was manager at Atletico Madrid.
Despite the threat they pose to his side’s Champions League qualification hopes, Pochettino believes Leicester’s form has been good for English football. Their squad is fantastic.
“They have a good mix of young and old”. We can certainly expect that Danny Rose and Kieran Trippier will start, and it’s also possible that Harry Kane will be rested for Son Heung-Min up top. We work very hard to identify the players who are fresh and those who will play in the next few games’. We can show a lot of injury in last few games. We need to be clever in our decisions.
As he did in the League Cup this season, Ranieri will also make wholesale changes to his team in the FA Cup, although Jeff Schlupp (hamstring) and Matty James (knee) are still not ready to return. It will be a blend of players. Our mentality doesn’t change.
“Obviously when we equalised we felt confident but as the game went on it got a bit stretched and we went chasing the three points but it just wasn’t to be. If Tottenham are better, well done to them”.
Tottenham rarely do things the easy way and this year’s edition of the FA Cup is unlikely to see the north London club stray from such a topsy-turvy tradition.
Tottenham head coach Mauricio Pochettino: “It’s not a distraction, the FA Cup is the oldest competition in the world”. “We have a strong squad and Christmas was busy”.
Advertisement
Mousa Dembele and Ryan Mason are both out with ankle injuries. However, to move one step closer to Wembley the Foxes must defeat an in-form Tottenham team, who are quietly making a title push of their own.
