Tottenham Hotspur vs AS Roma Preview

Tottenham Hotspur will welcome AS Roma to North London hoping to bounce back from their first defeat in the Europa League this season.

Spurs went into the last international break in poor form after recording back-to-back defeats to Galatasaray and Ipswich. However, they bounced back after the break, recording a massive 4-0 away win over Manchester City which handed Pep Guardiola his biggest home-losing margin of his entire career.

Building on that win should be their target here. However, Tottenham have proven to be too inconsistent this season, ceding Ipswich and Crystal Palace their first Premier League wins of the season.

So it’s hard to predict which Tottenham will turn up on any given day and without injured starting goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, they attempt to record just their third Europa League victory over an Italian club at the ninth attempt (W2, D4, L2).

Meanwhile, AS Roma may appear unlikely to go one step better this season after winning just one of their first four league phase matches (D2, L1). But that’s precisely what they did in the 2022/23 group stage before winning their final two matches against HJK (2-1 away) and Legia Warsaw (3-1 home) to reach the knockout round play-offs and beyond.

The 2022/23 Europa League runners-ups got to the 2022/23 final in spite of some very indifferent travelling form, which has continued into 2024/25. They have won just one of their last 12 Europa League away games played outside of Italy (D6, L5), and even that was away to then-winless Moldovan club Sheriff Tiraspol. So a phenomenal effort will be required to overcome Tottenham’s home form.