Here are your Tottenham evening headlines for Thursday, January 21st.
Jose Mourinho's key step
Jose Mourinho is one key step away from assembling his dream team at Tottenham, as he looks to settle in on a first-choice defensive line-up.
While the Portuguese boss has seen his side become settled in other areas of the field, which is getting the best out of Harry Kane and Son Heung-Min, there has been chopping and changing at the back.
Serge Aurier and Sergio Reguilon appear to have the full-back spots locked in but it has been a different story in the centre, with the most recent approach being a three-man partnership between Joe Rodon, Ben Davies and Eric Dier.
Dier is seen as the leading man, with the most starts, and Toby Alderweireld has been a regular but has now been on the bench in three of the last four matches.
Summer task becomes clear
Tottenham have found it difficult to manage their quota of non-homegrown players in recent years and the task to resolve that issue lies ahead this summer.
That has been shown again this year with Paulo Gazzaniga, Joe Rodon and Gedson Fernandes excluded from the Europa League squad, with a decision now needing to be made on whether Rodon is brought in for the knockout stages of the competition.
In order to fix this, a number of players could be offloaded when the summer comes around and our Spurs man Rob Guest has taken a look at the options.
Hasenhuttl remains positive over Ings
Southampton manager Ralph Hasenhuttl has remained positive on Danny Ings contract situation despite the club being at an impasse in negotiations with the forward.
Spurs have long-term interest in the striker, who enters the final 12 months of his deal this summer, but the Saints boss told a press conference he is remaining positive on the situation.
"I can only say that we want him to stay here. We've shown as a club that we want him to be here, definitely, and he's shown signals that he wants to stay with us. So I'm still positive that we're fine together for the future.
"We also showed him what we don’t want. Every time the contract of a player comes to an end, the power goes to the player but I think it’s not that easy. For us, it’s important to show him we don’t want him to sell him. We don’t want to sell him next summer. We want him to stay with us.
