After failing to score in a fourth straight match to start the 2026/27 Premier League season, Roberto De Zerbi will bring his rag tag bunch to the Third Round of the League Cup on Tuesday night facing one of the toughest teams in the Premier League in Liverpool.
Spurs actually put five past Charlton Athletic in the Second Round a couple of weeks ago, but Charlton are not in the English top flight. And while Liverpool are not the juggernaut they were in the 2024/25 season, the Reds are still a side loaded with talent and have a much better track record of success lately than Spurs.
Tottenham fans want to see the team actually perform well in the cups, so they will not be happy to hear De Zerbi's plan for the Liverpool game. He told reporters at the press conference, via The Spurs Watch, that he plans on using "all other players" against the Reds, implying heavy rotations and the potential "B Team" coming in.
Which attackers can even rotate in for Tottenham?
Now, some will argue that the "B Team" can't be worse than the "A Team", but the reality is that Tottenham Hotspur have actually shown improvement over the past two weeks in the Premier League in getting 0-0 draws out of Nottingham Forest and Everton, considering they were blown out by a combined 5-0 against Brentford and Newcastle United on the first two Matchdays of the campaign.
The defense and midfield have been great, so Tottenham rotating away from Antonin Kinsky, Rodrigo Bentancur, Jan Paul van Hecke, Mateus Fernandes, and Micky van de Ven could be greatly to their detriment, even as the likes of Marcos Senesi could use minutes.
As for the attack, there isn't much depth worth playing. Richarlison is actually eligible to play in the League Cup and is an Everton boy, even if he did betray them this summer transfer window, who loves himself a big day against the Men in Red. But Roberto De Zerbi has frozen him out of the squad and isn't going to play him, even if he can't be a worse scoring option than Dominic Solanke or even Omar Marmoush, considering he led Tottenham in Premier League goals last season.
But rotating away from Savio, for example, would take out the one guy who is actually beating defenders and creating chances in the final third, even if his end product is still lacking. De Zerbi could be setting up Tottenham for an early League Cup exit, which will only fuel some of th sentiment against him.
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