Carter-Vickers and Harrison Included in Spurs Squad

Mauricio Pochettino managed to surprise in two distinct ways when he named the Spurs squad that would be traveling to Baku, Azerbaijan this week to take on Qarabag FK in the Europa League.

One, it’s a more robust squad than most might have expected considering the distance to be traveled and the relative lack of quality in the opponent. Only Mousa Dembélé, Danny Rose and Kyle Walker were held back from traveling with the rest of the fit players. Nacer Chadli and Alex Pritchard remain long term injury concerns and naturally stayed back, while niggling knocks to both Nabil Bentaleb and Érik Lamela mean they are allowed to stay home as well.

Even without those players, that means a full compliment of Tottenham’s strongest will at least be on the bench and likely also in the starting XI. Harry Kane, Christian Eriksen, Eric Dier, Dele Alli, Toby Alderweireld, Jan Vertonghen and Heung-min Son could all earn starts.

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Spurs lead Europa League Group J with seven points to their name and could have, in theory, elected to use this match against Qarabag to field a B team. As we discussed yesterday in our lineup prediction piece, Andros Townsend, Tom Carroll and Kieran Trippier could all benefit from playing time, even if it were against the Azerbaijani champions.

Such a wholesale rotation of players wouldn’t be in keeping with Pochettino’s gameplan so far this season. He’s named fairly strong squads in each of the Europa League matches so far, including Thursday’s reverse fixture played back in September. After four consecutive seasons in the competition, Pochettino seems set on making a deep run with Spurs at the very least. Part of that will, of course, mean qualifying for the next round, and ideally winning to group to reduce the quality of the competition in the first knockout round next February.

And so Spurs bring a good number of first team regulars. While that might have been predictable, the names Pochettino included to fill out the 21-man roster for the trip include two players who have never appeared with the first team before.

Cameron Carter-Vickers is among the more promising players in Spurs’ youth academy. At 17-years-old, the veteran of the United States’ national team youth squads regularly exceeds expectations. He plays centre-back with a physicality and purpose of a much older man, and has seemed for some time to be the next call-up in an ever-more-increasingly youth oriented Spurs team.

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Shayon Harrison might not be as well known as Carter-Vickers, but he’s making more and more noise playing for Spurs’ Under-21 development team. Check of Alex Balano’s profile of him for more details of what to expect from the 18-year-old striker.

How much field time will these players actually get? Likely not much. If anything, they come on as substitutes in the dying stages of the game. Still, the fact that two such exceptionally young players have been brought up into an already young squad in a promising development for both the individual players and the club overall. The quicker the likes of Carter-Vickers and Harrison can find first team action, the better off the club will be.