Ludogorets Razgrad will arrive in London today for the Europa League clash against Tottenham Hotspur on Thursday.
The Bulgarian champions suffered a 3-1 defeat to Spurs earlier in the group, with Harry Kane, Lucas Moura and Giovani Lo Celso finding the back of the net, and are yet to manage a point in the group stages.
Having last played a match [on November 8th] more than two weeks ago, Ludogorets’ preparation for the midweek clash against José Mourinho’s side became even more complicated due to the current situation at the club.
On Tuesday, reports coming out of Bulgaria stated there was worry the visitors ‘cannot complete their squad’ for their trip to north London.
According to Dnevnik, Ludogorets manager Stanislav Genchev has ‘hardly assembled a group of 18 players’ to face the English club.
It’s claimed Kiril Despodov will return from injury, but midfielder Alex Santana and Cicinho will not be involved in the European tie.
Ludogorets saw 12 of his players test positive for coronavirus on November 10th and even though they have been out of quarantine this week, Genchev stressed why it’s challenging for him to field a strong team to take on Tottenham.
“We’ve had a lot of difficulties in recent weeks but I’m still looking forward to playing a good game,” Genchev said.
“The bad news is, we’ve disrupted the training process a lot. We’ve had a lot of sick footballers. In the upcoming match, there will be a lot of absent players who have not yet recovered, it was difficult for us to assemble the group.
“The sick players have not trained for 2 weeks and literally yesterday and the other day they came out of quarantine. They will have to play after one training session. This is quite difficult, especially against such a strong team.”
Meanwhile, Mourinho’s men have been in fine form this season, suffering only one defeat in the Premier League and Europa League.
