Charlton chief drops line-up admission before Tottenham trip in Carabao Cup

Charlton are set to rest players for their Carabao Cup tie with Tottenham on Wednesday night.

The in-form Championship side head to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium having won all three of their opening games in all competitions.

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They currently sit joint-top of the table with Millwall and West Brom with a 100 per cent record and got an impressive 2-1 win at recently relegated West Ham on Saturday.

All the pressure will be on Spurs having been soundly beaten 3-0 by Brentford on the opening day of the Premier League season.

Wednesday night’s match will also be live on talkSPORT, with kick-off at 7:45pm.

However, Charlton managing director Jim Rodwell revealed on talkSPORT’s White and Jordan that manager Nathan Jones will make changes.

He said: “You cannot work in football for as long as I have and not be an optimist, it would take you down otherwise. 

“We beat Cheltenham just before the season started to get into the second round [of the Carabao Cup]. 

“The alternative of not playing tonight would have been getting beat at Cheltenham and that would have been the end of the world for a lot of our fan base. 

“It’s a great game. We’ve got to go there and put on the best show we possibly can. 

“I think the manager’s going to rest quite a few. There’s quite a few making debuts tonight, which I’m excited about because we’ve got a lot of footballers. They need to play football.”

Playing at Tottenham also means extra cash for the Addicks, which is vitally important according to Rodwell.

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He added: “Cups are desperately important to us, it’s revenue. They’ve lowered the ticket price, there’ll be 60,000 people in the stadium tonight.

“We’re the same as everybody else, we want money and we have an obligation to do the best we can. So for me it’s not too far to go.”

Charlton’s targets this season

Charlton maintained their Championship status with a match to go last season, having been promoted from League One via the play-offs in the 2024/25 season.

There is an extra incentive for second tier clubs thanks to the revamped play-off system in place in the Championship.

Teams from third down to eighth will battle it out for a place in the Premier League come the end of the season.

Rodwell said: “It’s an incentive. The Championship is effectively an arms race. What you don’t want to do is necessarily get caught up in an arms race. 

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“Seventh or eighth is great. It gives somebody a couple of extra places but you can’t be you can’t be willy-nilly about the whole thing. 

“I like the idea of it. It keeps games interesting. I know that a lot of football supporters think that this is a fundamental change to the way that the game is operated. 

“I look at it from a different way. I think it keeps games really interesting for much longer and gives people more opportunity.

“When the playoffs were first voiced 30 odd years ago people were resistant. It was the end of the world.

“What would we do without the playoffs now? One of the most genius inventions we’ve ever had in football.”

Tottenham team news

New signing Savio is eligible to play against Charlton tonight, but boss Roberto De Zerbi admitted he was not sure he was ready.

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James Maddison will miss out with a shoulder injury, while Mohammed Kudus is still not fit despite returning to training.

In more positive news for Spurs, Micky van de Ven and Pedro Porro will be on the bench.

Striker Dominic Solanke is also fit enough to start the game after coming on in the defeat to Brentford.