Mauricio Pochettino has taken a strong 21-man Tottenham Hotspur squad on the long journey to Baku for tonight’s tie against Qarabag, omitting only three first-team players through choice – Kyle Walker, Danny Rose and Mousa Dembélé.

The manager, who is also without the injured Nacer Chadli, Nabil Bentaleb, Érik Lamela and Alex Pritchard, has bemoaned the decision of the authorities to order a 12pm kick-off in Sunday’s Premier League derby against Chelsea at White Hart Lane, given that his squad will not get home from the game in Azerbaijan until 5am tomorrow morning, at the earliest.

Tottenham can afford to lose to Qarabag and still qualify for the knockout phase – their final tie is at home to Monaco on December 10th – and some fans had wanted Pochettino to leave all of his stars back in London.

Pochettino had planned to take Bentaleb but the midfielder was the victim of a terrible challenge when playing for Algeria against Tanzania last week in a World Cup qualifier, which has re-aggravated his nagging ankle injury.

A feature of Pochettino’s squad is the presence of nine Academy products.

The 17-year-old defender, Cameron Carter-Vickers, and the 18-year-old forward, Shayon Harrison, are included in a senior travelling squad for the first time, and they join Josh Onomah, Harry Winks and Luke McGee, together with the more established quartet of Harry Kane, Ryan Mason, Andros Townsend and Tom Carroll. Guardian Service