Villas-boas: we'll miss Adebayor

Deprived of Emmanuel Adebayor for forthcoming games against West Ham, Liverpool and Fulham after his red card in Saturday's 5-2 defeat, Tottenham will revert to Plan A to stay in touch with the increasing number of teams above them in the table. That means using Jermain Defoe up front, probably with the struggling Clint Dempsey behind him.

Against Arsenal, Andre Villas-Boas boldly started with both Defoe and Adebayor, who had helped put their team in control and in the lead, until the latter's wild challenge on Santi Cazorla.

"They have flourished in the past, they know each other very, very well," Villas-Boas said. "We can't have that for a couple of games which is hard to take. We will certainly miss him [Adebayor]."

It would make sense to pick the player for Thursday's Europa League game away to Lazio. The Italian club's supporters will be under the microscope after Spurs players were racially abused when the teams met in September. On Saturday, Tottenham fans chanted "Yid Army" and "We're Tottenham Hotspur, we'll sing what we want" in response to complaints by the Society of Black Lawyers. A police spokesman said there had been only five arrests before, after and during the game, "none of them for use of the Y-word".