Tottenham manager Andre Villas-Boas keen to maintain love affair with Europa League starting against Lazio 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 Benoît 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. But psychology tells the Portuguese not to be defeatist. "Statistics are there to be beaten at any time," he said. You try to follow a pattern but that doesn't mean these statistics can't be broken. We think at the moment of the Queens Park Rangers game [on Sunday] bearing in mind that it is a weekend where the top four title contenders meet each other. If we are to take an advantage of that situation we have to win against QPR. This League is unpredictable as was showed last year and in the end you have to wait and see. By this stage last year there was a team condemned to death and a managerial change, which was Arsenal. But in the end it finished beautifully for them. Things look like they are looking up for Hugo Lloris, the France international goalkeeper who has been frustrated to find himself on the White Hart Lane bench since joining from Lyon on transfer-deadline day. Villas-Boas had positive words for his new recruit in a hint that suggests he will start against Lazio on Thursday night. "The only thing we can say is that his talent is immense and easily visible from the time he has trained with us," said Villas-Boas. But this is true of all the goalkeepers that we have. Paul Gascoigne's name is close to the hearts of both sides at White Hart Lane on Thursday but the troubled former England international will not be there to witness his two old clubs clash in the Europa League. Gazza was invited along to the match to be guest of honour but declined due to personal reasons. There will be a second chance for Gascoigne to watch the tie: Lazio's general manager Maurizio Manzini said after the draw that pits the two clubs together for the first time: "For sure we will invite him to the match in Rome." Tottenham Hotspur (Probable, 4-2-3-1): Lloris; Walker, Caulker, Vertonghen, Naughton; Huddlestone, Dembele; Lennon, Sigurdsson, Dempsey; Defoe. Lazio (Probable, 4-1-4-1): Marchetti; Scaloni, Biava, Dias, Lulic; Ledesma; Candreva, Gonzalez, Hernanes, Mauri; Klose. Referee: O Hategan (Romania).