Aston Villa welcome Tottenham in the FA Cup this weekend - they're without 11 first-team players including Timo Werner, Dominic Solanke, Cristian Romero and Richarlison
Tottenham Hotspur boss Ange Postecoglou has confirmed that Richarlison will miss the FA Cup tie with Aston Villa this weekend after suffering an injury set-back in the EFL Cup defeat to Liverpool on Thursday evening.
Brazilian Richarlison limped off with a calf complaint in the first half of the 4-0 humbling at Anfield, having spent most of this season sidelined through hamstring injuries at it is. It was clear pretty much immediately that something had gone wrong for the forward when he pulled up. Now, he is set to be missing again for the foreseeable future - and certainly for Sunday's fourth round tie.
"It's disappointing for him," Postecoglou told Football.London. "He was emotional last night because he worked really hard to get himself back but again, it's another setback that he's going to have to deal with, we're going to have to deal with and hopefully get him back as soon as possible."
Meanwhile, none of the other ten players who have been missing on Spurs' lengthy injury list are currently set to return this weekend. Postecoglou is currently without a whole host of key first team players, many of who make up the spine of the starting XI and who, in their absence, have been deeply missed with Spurs' form taking a hit in recent months.
Striker Dominic Solanke, playmaker James Maddison and centre half Micky Van de Ven are among the number on the sidelines currently, now rejoined by Richarlison, and Postecoglou will have to make for Villa Park with what is remaining of his available squad.
"I know that this is all kind of reactive to last night," he added. "Vicario, Romero, Van de Ven, Solanke, Wilson Odobert, Udogie, Maddison, Brennan Johnson, I could go on and on. We had 10 missing players last night. If you take seven or eight key players out of a team it has an impact. I know constantly saying it dulls people to it but it's true. The main thing I would take from last night's game was the way we went about it.
"No, I didn't think anyone...we thought maybe Micky was a chance for Thursday. I didn't think this week, it was the start of next week where we're still hopeful we'll get at least two, maybe three back for the Man United game.
"We've got two full weeks of training, which I think over these two weeks we'll get the majority of the players back with a bit of luck, provided we don't lose anyone else like we lost Richy last night. I knew this week was going to be a challenging week in terms of personnel, because we just weren't going to get anyone back, so there's no sort of disappointment that anyone missed out."