Villas-Boas taking Europa League seriously

Andre Villas-Boas has already succeeded in turning round the damaging momentum of Tottenham Hotspur's early league form with a first win of the season at Reading on Sunday.

Now, as Spurs prepare to host Lazio in the Europa League he must transform the attitudes of his squad towards a competition he holds dear. For it was winning the Europa League with Porto in 2011 that brought Villas-Boas out of the shadow of his mentor, Jose Mourinho.

He keeps his winner's medal in a presentation case at his home in Portugal, in contrast to the barely disguised disdain his predecessor at Tottenham, Harry Redknapp, had for the Thursday night competition. Redknapp showed as much with team selections that seemed more designed for Spurs' weekend Premier League exertions than for the matter in hand.

"In the end I think the most important thing for you is to change, or create, physical cycles for the players so this midweek game starts being important once again," he said.

"So, based on the respect that we must have for a competition like this, first we have to create the habit of them recovering to play in this midweek game. Then getting used to playing this midweek game, and creating this habit, I think their mental disposition for the game, their physical disposition for the game, will be extremely higher than before."

That psycho-scientific approach is precisely why Spurs hired their urbane, polyglot manager in favour of the more traditional football beast who had led them into the Champions League for the first time.

But Villas-Boas knows his task is exacting. "I think in the end it's obviously extremely difficult," he said.

"We are struggling with some recent injuries - two important players in the squad [Emmanuel Adebayor and Benoit Assou-Ekotto] that have been limiting us in terms of what we can do. We were lucky in the weeks before that we didn't have midweek fixtures until now."

Yet Tottenham's early-season weakness may already have cost them in an area that Redknapp was always positive: the Premier League title race.

History will tell Villas-Boas that Blackburn Rovers are the only team apart from Manchester United ever to have won the Premier League having been outside the top four after four games and Spurs are unlikely to break into it even after five.

France goalkeeper Hugo Lloris will make his Spurs debut against Lazio.

Tottenham Hotspur (4-2-3-1): Lloris; Walker, Caulker, Vertonghen, Naughton; Huddlestone, Dembele; Lennon, Sigurdsson, Dempsey; Defoe.

Lazio (4-1-4-1): Marchetti; Scaloni, Biava, Dias, Lulic; Ledesma; Candreva, Gonzalez, Hernanes, Mauri; Klose.

Referee: O Hategan (Romania).