Tottenham 3-1 Qarabag
by Joel Sharples
at White Hart Lane

ERIC DIER is a major doubt for tomorrow’s big clash against Crystal Palace, with Mauricio Pochettino feeling the pressure on his Tottenham midfield.

Dier hobbled off with an injured knee in Thursday night’s 3-1 win against Qarabag FK. And with Ryan Mason being taken off on a stretcher against Sunderland last Sunday and Nabil Bentaleb also out, Spurs are now potentially lacking their key central midfielders with important games coming up against Palace and then Arsenal in the League Cup on Wednesday.

The Spurs manager is well aware of how much of a danger sixth-placed Palace pose this season.

“It’s a very strong team and a very good team and they’ve improved a lot in different positions,” he said in Thursday’s post-match press conference.

Pochettino admitted the need to rotate his squad with the congested autumn fixture period just beginning and in the Europa League tie he made six changes from Sunday’s win against Sunderland.

“We have a lot of games ahead now. I think that we need to be careful with the players. We need to give them time to recover. I think we need to manage all players in a good way because we have some problems.”

However, he emphasised that Tottenham’s large squad will help them cope with the dense fixture list.

Some of the new starters against Qarabag looked more than capable of deputising if need be, with Kevin Wimmer a calm and commanding presence at centre back.

Kieran Trippier also recovered from a nightmare start to put in an assured performance at right back. With six minutes gone he tripped the Azerbaijani side’s left back Ansi Agolli in the box and Richard Almeida de Oliveira dispatched the penalty confidently past Hugo Lloris.

Spurs struggled to stamp their mark on the game and missed Mason’s energy and determination in midfield but in the space of two minutes they had taken the lead through two goals from new signing Son Heung Min.

On 27 minutes an Andros Townsend corner found Son completely unmarked and he poked the ball home from two yards to claim his first goal for the club.

He doubled his tally moments later when a delightful pirouette from Dele Alli created space to lay the ball off for Son, who tucked the ball into the corner.

Qarabag had plenty of chances to equalise, with some sloppy backpasses from Danny Rose nearly allowing Afran Ismaliyov to steal in on two occasions but Spurs held on and sealed the win with a delightful dink from Erik Lamela with five minutes to go.