In case you were wondering, Tottenham Hotspur have had their Carabao Cup third round match details confirmed by the FA today; Spurs will kick off against League One side Doncaster Rovers at home on Wednesday, September 24. Welcome back, mid-week football!
As a consequence, Tottenham’s weekend Premier League match against Wolves, originally scheduled for a 3 pm UK kick, has been moved back to the late-late slot on Saturday evening — an 8 pm kick-off (3 pm ET) in North London.
This has rankled some fans who don’t like 8 pm kick-offs in London for various transport reasons, but with Tottenham set to fly to Norway immediately afterwards for a Tuesday evening Champions League match against Bodø/Glimt, I can only assume the league thought a Saturday late match was better than pushing them to Sunday, when they’d have one less day to prepare for Champions League. Even so, three matches in a week feels… excessive? Not sure there’s much that can be done to avoid it, though.
No matter what it’s going to be a run of fixtures with very little recovery and prep time. We should probably get used to that — it’s the nature of football and so long as Spurs are competing in four competitions, the matches will come thick and fast. I can only imagine that Spurs will likely rotate pretty heavily against Doncaster, moderately against Wolves, and go full-tilt against Bodø/Glimt. That’s why we have a squad!