Mourinho only has eyes for Villa match
Jose Mourinho is not allowing his focus to drift beyond today’s game with Aston Villa as Tottenham enter a pivotal week in their season.
Spurs head to Villa Park today for the first of three matches in six days following the resumption after the winter break.
Mourinho has moaned widely about the scheduling over this afternoon’s game considering they are in Champions League action against RB Leipzig on Wednesday night and then face a massive test in their pursuit of the Premier League top four by visiting Chelsea on Saturday lunchtime.
But the trip to the second city is Mourinho’s primary concern. He said:
“It’s a very difficult week for us, and then of course we would like to play Chelsea on the Sunday after Leipzig, but not on Saturday. And we would like to play Saturday 5pm, but instead we play at 12 o’clock.
“So it’s a really hard week for us – Sunday Villa, Wednesday Leipzig, Saturday Chelsea. But let’s go match after match, and the first one will be difficult. Always difficult Villa Park.
“Villa are a good team, fighting to stay in the division, self-esteem really high after reaching the Wembley final.
“Very difficult match, we have to go with all the potential we have, forgetting that two days after we have to play Leipzig.”
With such a big week coming up, Mourinho said he may rotate his sides, even though they are fresh from a 10-day break.
“Some positions we can, some we cannot. That is the basic thing,” he said.
“They are not coming from a period of fatigue, but when you arrive on the third match of the week with only two days in between and on Saturday they cannot even sleep, they have to wake up at 8 o’clock to go to Stamford Bridge and play.
“For the third match we have to be careful and maybe will have to do a little bit of rotation in between the matches.
“But in this moment we are focused on Villa, it is difficult enough for us to be sharing our concentration with other matches. Let’s go for Villa.”
Villa boss Dean Smith is hoping with John Terry in his corner he can “plot the downfall” of the former England defender’s old Chelsea manager.
During his 19-year playing career with the Blues, Terry worked under Mourinho for almost six of those, winning three Premier League titles, the FA Cup and three League Cups together. Now