Jason was named among the provisional squad heading to Slovenia for the match against NS Mura much to his and the fans joy and early on the matchday-1, they jumped on the plane in the late afternoon.

The flight was about two and a half hours and after landing at the airport, they got on the arranged bus that took them to their hotel for the night.

Having a quick dinner and doing a few stretches to help reduce muscle stress, the players went to sleep to rest from the fatigue of their journey.

Of course some players were more interested in exploring a little of Slovenia’s night life, but Conte wasn’t having it and had told the players to rest.

Of course, the players were adults and weren’t going to be stopped if they actually decided to go out, but they would definitely be found out and that meant getting in the manager’s bad books.

Not many people wanted to risk that.

Even Dele Alli who would almost without doubt be leaving the club in January of the coming year since his contract was running out and the club didn’t seem interested in renewing it.

His only way to make a comeback would be to become useful to the manager and he was making an attempt at that so he wouldn’t dare do anything crazy at this moment.

In the end, the players got a good rest and the next morning were up energized and ready for the day’s training and match.

First having breakfast at the hotel before heading over to the NS Mura field to have a one hour training session and to inspect the field.

After getting injured because of a field with artificial grass had now made it a point to carefully inspect the grass of any pitch he would ever play on.

On getting to the Ljudski Vrt, the home stadium of NK Maribor which was being borrowed for the match against NS Mura, the players first went to change while the training staff began preparing for the training session.

Since it wasn’t a full on training session, there was only need for balls and a few basing training kits like colored cones and colored bibs.

When the finally stepped on the pitch, the first thing they did was to inspect the pitch and after confirming that there wasn’t anything wrong, they began training.

It was a pretty laid back session as it wasn’t really so much as actually training and rather more about maintaining the players’s rhythm.

It was more tactical than fitness and after a quick warmup, the players began the training.

Media were allowed for the first 15 minutes and then kicked out while the players went on to finishing drills, rondos and set-piece practice.

The field was filled with the players laughter and voices as they joked around while practicing and organizing small competitions as they did the drills.

Finally, they practiced their shape without the intensity of the game and wrapped up the training for the day and headed back to the hotel to have lunch and rest a bit before the game.

Some of the players had the physios give them a little treatment before they went to get some rest.

As the time approached 4pm the players got up again, did some pre-match activation at the hotel before getting on the bus and heading to the stadium again.

Unlike their arrival earlier in the day which had gone unnoticed, this time there were already quite a few fans arriving at the stadium who caught sight of the Tottenham bus arriving.

The security did their jobs and allowed the bus to pass uninterrupted and head to the back of the stadium to the players entrance.

There the players got off and headed into the stadium, going to prepare kit up and begin the pre-match warmup.

A few minutes later, in front of a crowd that grew every minute, Tottenham began their pre-match warmup and at this point the starting lineup for the game was already spreading across the internet.

Like most people expected, Conte was rotating the squad quite a bit from the side that played against Leeds previously.

For want of a spare striker, Kane was starting again, but almost everyone other than him who started the previous game were either on the bench or weren’t part of the squad at all.

Behind Kane was Dele Alli and Bryan Gil.

Davison Sanchez, Oliver Skipp, Tanguy Ndombele and Ryan Sessgnon were behind them and the backline was Matt Doherty, Japhet Tanganga and Joe Rodon. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Though a few had been hoping for it, Jason’s name not being in the line up was something that most people expected, even the player in question himself.

However he also hoped for the manager to give him some minutes later in the game. Those were his thoughts while warming up.

Time passed quickly and soon the substitute players and the coaches were on the sidelines as the game kicked off.

Having already lost to Tottenham in a previous leg, five goals to one, NS Mura knew that despite the somewhat lacking defensive quality of their opponents, their attacking prowess more than made up for it.

And with a new manager and revamped tactics, things could only get worse for them if they weren’t careful.

Thus their tactics for the game was to defend like their lives depended on it and to only counterattack when possible.

So defensive was their tactical setup that even when attacking on the break, only about three players ran forward while the rest stayed back to defend.

NS Mura had set themselves up as if saying, no matter what, we’re not going to lose today.

With such a tactical arrangement, the most unlucky thing that could happen to Tottenham would be to allow Mura to somehow score first.

And which football team was more unlucky than Tottenham?

In the 11th minute of the game, Mura got a chance to counter and a long ball was sent into the path of Tomi Horvat, NS Mura’s right winger.

Continuing to run until he got to the right side of Tottenham’s penalty area, he squared up against Davison Sanchez and cut inside, flicking the ball fast past Snachez’s side.

It wasn’t an impressive move and was the kind of move that should have been easily stopped, but somehow Sanchez let him through, allowing him to enter the penalty box from the left.

The alarm bells had begun to ring in the Tottenham’s players heads, but before they could even make a move to stop Tomi, the man hit the ball.