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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Sport
Dan Kilpatrick

Tottenham to assess James Maddison and Heung-min Son ahead of Liverpool as Brennan Johnson misses out

Tottenham will assess James Maddison and Heung-min Son ahead of Saturday’s visit of Liverpool but Brennan Johnson will definitely miss out.

Johnson pulled up with a suspected hamstring injury in the second half of last weekend’s 2-2 draw at Arsenal, in which Maddison and Son were also substituted in the second half.

Maddison, who jarred his knee in a challenge with Jorginho but was able to play on before he was replaced, set up both goals for Son at the Emirates and the pair have been crucial to Spurs’ unbeaten start under Ange Postecoglou.

"Brennan will miss out - it’s nothing too serious but he won’t be right for this week," Postecoglou said on Friday. "Madders and Sonny trained today, just finished the session and seemed to get through it not too bad.

"We’ll just have to see how they pull up as it’s fair to say they were a bit sore after last week and had a bit of an interrupted week training so just a matter of seeing how they pull up."

Liverpool are unbeaten in 17 League games, the longest run of any club in Europe’s top five divisions and Postecoglou, who supported the Reds growing up, believes the match will be another "great test" for his developing young side.

"They probably bring something different from any other team in the league in the way they play and the manner they go about things, and it’ll be a really good test for us to try to impose our football on a team that’s fairly unique in the way they play the game," Postecoglou said.

"Jurgen [Klopp] is an outstanding manager, he’s one the managers I think it’s fair to say who has made an impact on the competition, not just his club.

Johnson will miss the Liverpool game - but his injury is not thought to be serious (Action Images via Reuters)

"Because when he came in, with the way Liverpool went about things, he challenged quite a few of the conventions about the Premier League and introduced a new style of play that others have followed. It’s a great test for where we are at the moment in terms of our development."

Asked why he choose Liverpool as young Greek immigrant growing up in Australia, Postecoglou said: "It was the ‘70s, so you went one of two ways: it seemed they only used to show Liverpool or Man U at the time so a couple of my best mates went Man U, so I went the other way so we could keep it interesting.

"Like any kid, I had the posters up on my wall, so Liverpool was my team. But you grow up, things change. I used to love Happy Days back then too, but I don’t have pictures of Fonzy on my wall today either. So it’s just the way things are."

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