Tottenham Hotspur vs FK Qarabag Preview

Tottenham Hotspur’s Europa League campaign begins this Thursday when they welcome defending Azerbaijan Premier League champions Qarabag to North London.

Tottenham are playing in this competition for the first time since the 2020/21 season and they enter as one of the favourites alongside fellow Premier League side Manchester United. The North London club also enter this tournament with an enormous burden as they are yet to win a major trophy to their name since 2007/08.

Spurs manager Ange Postecoglou recently boasted to the press that he “always wins things in (his) second year” at a club, and so the expectation of supporters has heightened ahead of this campaign but they will have to play this game without key defender Cristian Romero for this outing, who is carrying a suspension over from his last European outing.

While Romero will be a big miss, Tottenham’s record at home suggests that they will be okay without the Argentine. Spurs are currently unbeaten in 13 games (W11, D2) across all European competitions since 2020/21, excluding one Europa Conference League match against Rennes which was forfeited due to a number of Covid cases in the squad. More recently, Spurs won each of their last six Premier League home games as the favourites so they ought to be feeling strong ahead of their first European game of this term.

Meanwhile, Qarabag are playing in their ninth Europa League group/league stage since 2014/15. Their most successful participation in the competition came last season as they reached the Round of 16. It is therefore no surprise that they’ve retained long-term coach Qurban Qurbanov to add to his more than 170 European games of experience as a club and national team manager.

Interestingly, the visitors have won more continental matches at opposition venues than at their own since the start of last season (five at home, seven away). So, leaving their stadium behind doesn’t appear to be an impediment. Whilst this is likely to be more difficult than the majority of those they encountered last season, Qarabağ’s enormous 4-2 knockout round play-off upset victory away to Portugal’s Braga is recent evidence of what they’re capable of as underdogs.