Antonio Conte has laid down a challenge to the Tottenham players he has brought into his team to take on Liverpool.
Last in action two weeks ago as they registered a 3-0 win over Norwich City in north London, a Covid outbreak saw three of Tottenham's games postponed.
Following a number of positive tests at the club that stopped the Rennes and Brighton & Hove Albion matches going ahead, Leicester City then suffered an outbreak of their own and it meant Tottenham's match at the King Power Stadium on Thursday evening was called off six hours ahead of kick-off.
With six of this weekend's ten Premier League games cancelled due to a rise in cases, Spurs' home match against Liverpool was one of four that went ahead as scheduled.
However, Conte had to change things about in terms of his strongest Tottenham XI as he made five changes from the win over Norwich, with Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg missing out on the squad completely and bringing his run of 52 consecutive league starts for the Lilywhites to an end as a result.
Emerson Royal and Ryan Sessegnon came into the team in the wing-back positions, with Conte opting for a midfield trio of Harry Winks, Dele Alli and Tanguy Ndombele.
Asked about how big a chance it is for those coming in, the experienced boss stated that it's an opportunity to show him that the players can remain as part of his plans in north London.
"I trust in these players. We've had the possibility in these two weeks to work with these players because they were without Covid," he told Sky Sports ahead of the game.
"We worked in an intensive way with them. For sure, today is a good chance to show also they want to play for Tottenham, to continue to stay here and that the level is your level."
On the past two weeks at the club following the Covid outbreak, he added: "It’s not easy we had two weeks, very difficult weeks with nine players with Covid and the whole members of staff with Covid and all the under 23s with Covid and for us it was very difficult to have a training session.
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"And the government decided to close the training ground for three days and for three days we didn’t have a training session and the last game was two weeks ago against Norwich.
"For sure it’s not simple to try to prepare for the game. We have to be safe for this reason the Premier League has made the decisions."
