Giovani Lo Celso has stated that he is "100% in good physical condition" following his shock omission from the Tottenham squad to face Chelsea.
Unavailable for a large chunk of Antonio Conte's Tottenham tenure so far due to an injury sustained on international duty, the Argentina international has only featured in seven games for Spurs under the head coach.
One of those came on Wednesday evening as he played the final 16 minutes of Tottenham's thrilling 3-2 win against Leicester City.
Despite coming on and helping Spurs turn the game around, Lo Celso has joined Dele Alli and Tanguy Ndombele in finding himself out of the 20-man squad for the game across the capital.
Taking to his Instagram account shortly after team news emerged at 3.30pm, Lo Celso opened up on his exclusion and revealed that he is not injured and feels fully fit.
"Regarding the questions I received I would like to clear out that I am 100% in good physical condition. I have no problem and I feel very well," he said.
"I wish the best to my team in the derby today."
Lo Celso's absence sees academy ace Harvey White takes his place on the bench alongside the likes of Oliver Skipp. Lucas Moura, Bryan Gil and Dane Scarlett.
Speaking to Sky Sports ahead of the game, Conte opened up on his team selection and the current injury situation at the club.
"First of all we have made a formation for the players available," explained the Italian. "In the press conference before the game I said that we are faced with a couple of injuries for the game with Leicester and after the game with Leicester Moura and Skipp picked up problems, we have tried to recover them for the bench and their mentality was good. Also Emerson is not in 100 per cent physical condition."
He added: "Also if you arrive without the players it is always difficult to play in this moment about Chelsea. You are talking about an important team, who last season won the Champions League.
"It would a very difficult game even if we arrived with our perfect XI."
