Tottenham Hotspur's flood of fixtures before the World Cup are set to give some members of Antonio Conte's squad a chance to impress him.
This international break ends with Spurs making the trip to their local rivals Arsenal this Saturday and it is the first of a run of 13 matches that need to be squeezed into around six weeks of the calendar before club football pauses for the winter World Cup in Qatar to be accommodated.
Conte will have to rotate his starting line-up constantly with a match arriving every three to four days in the Premier League, Champions League and Carabao Cup. That will provide opportunities for some of his lesser used players this season to catch his eye and here are five of them that we think will be pushing hard to do so.
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Djed Spence
Tottenham fans want to see the summer recruit from Middlesbrough get his chance but so far Conte has been making it very clear to everyone that the 22-year-old has a lot of adapting to do first and is a prospect for the future rather than the now.
However, Spence's skill-set suits Conte's wing-back demands perfectly and if he gets his chance - perhaps in the Carabao Cup tie against his old team Nottingham Forest - then the speedy wide man might just show him what he can do.
Matt Doherty
There's another right wing-back looking for game time during this run of matches. Doherty said last week that Conte wanted him to get a couple of matches under his belt for Ireland as they take on Scotland and Armenia in the Nations League to improve his sharpness.
"That’s exactly what he said, he wants me to come away and try and get two games in," he said. "He said in his press conference that I would be available after the international break fully for selection."
Doherty was Conte's first choice in the role last season ahead of Emerson Royal until his knee injury. Now he needs to show the Italian that he's back to being the player he was before that match at Aston Villa.
Yves Bissouma
It seems strange that one of the Premier League's best central midfielders of last couple of years needs to impress anyone but Conte is no normal coach. The Italian's demands are high and he has said that Bissouma has taken longer to adapt to the tactical aspect of his philosophy and needs to improve the defensive side of his game.
The Mali international did impress with his cameo from the bench in a three-man midfield against Leicester and he will be hoping to build on that during the flood of matches to come.
Oliver Skipp
Conte is already a fan of the England U21 international and believes he's already an important player for Spurs but Skipp now needs to prove to the Italian that he is back to full fitness and sharpness. The 22-year-old has looked bright and back in the rhythm in his international appearances this week for Lee Carsley's team.
Both Skipp and Bissouma will be battling for a spot as Conte rotates the midfield with Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and Rodrigo Bentancur and the former duo could even prove that they can be used as a partnership in every other game to rest the more established pairing.
Japhet Tanganga is another academy product hoping for more game time, albeit in defence, but Skipp appears to be further up the pecking order in Conte's thinking.
Bryan Gil
The lesser spotted Spaniard wanted to head off on loan back to Valencia in the summer to get regular football ahead of the World Cup, but circumstances dictated the 21-year-old was left on the Spurs bench to be labelled merely a prospect by Conte.
Capped by his country at a senior level but now back with Spain's U21s, those chances to find a last-gasp way back into Luis Enrique's squad appear to have faded away at this point. Gil would first have to impress Conte and with five other attacking players in front of him, he needs to grab any small opportunity that comes his way in the weeks ahead as is the case with 20-year-old Pape Matar Sarr.
Another young midfielder, Harvey White, who will likely also be hoping for a loan in January, could get a minute or two against Forest in the Carabao Cup and has been praised by Conte in the past, but that he did not get a single minute despite being on the bench many times last season in a smaller squad does not bode well.
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