Chelsea vs Tottenham: Carabao Cup semi-final comes at worst possible time for both

For both Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur, Thursday night’s League Cup semi-final second leg has come at the worst possible time.

This is meant to the first big game of the season, the chance to get into a final before the other competitions have reached their serious end. Big clubs do not define their seasons by the League Cup but both of these would still obviously love to win it.

But with Spurs bringing just a 1-0 lead from the first leg, and with the tie perfectly balanced, it feels as if both sides would rather such a big game came round at a more helpful time. Rather than right now, when both sides find themselves under more pressure than they were expecting.

This will be Tottenham’s first game since the news of Dele Alli’s hamstring injury, news which will leave them without two of their most dangerous attacking players for the most important six weeks of the season. Alli’s injury has devastatingly dovetailed with a six-week ankle absence for Harry Kane. Meaning that Mauricio Pochettino has to find a way past Chelsea in the league cup, Chelsea and Arsenal in the league, Borussia Dortmund twice in the Champions League, and quite possibly Manchester City in the FA Cup too, all without his two most incisive forward players.

The story of this Tottenham season has been Pochettino getting better performances than ever with an even thinner squad. The team is desperately short in midfield, and Pochettino has had to get so much out of Harry Winks and Moussa Sissoko just to keep the team afloat. At least Eric Dier is back from appendicitis now, although Spurs still need another body there. But now the attention turns to the front line, especially as Heung Min Son, Spurs’ second top scorer, is still in the UAE playing in the Asian Cup. He may not return to London until 2 February.

What this means is that Pochettino will go into arguably the biggest match of Spurs’ season so far with a decidedly back-up front line, built around the creaky Fernando Llorente, hoping to get the inconsistent Lucas Moura back to fitness.

You might think that this puts Chelsea in the box seat given Spurs’ injuries, their fatigue and the worrying sense that they underperform in the games that have the most riding on them. And yet Chelsea are in the midst of their own difficult period. Maurizio Sarri took the unusual step of hammering his players in the press conference after Saturday’s defeat at the Emirates, questioning their mentality and saying they were difficult to motivate.

Six months into Sarri’s time at Chelsea, there have been more bad performances than good ones, and neither the players nor the crowd seem fully sold on his methods yet. They do not have any real rhythm yet, and this could just as likely be a Manchester City at home as it could be an Arsenal or Spurs away. It is the biggest test of Sarri’s reign yet and he must know that a bad result could destabilise him at the most delicate moment. High stakes, then, and a challenge that has snuck up on both sides and will catch one of them off guard tomorrow night.