Tottenham manager Antonio Conte confirms ‘worrying’ injury news ahead of North London derby

Antonio Conte says midfielder Dejan Kulusevski and goalkeeper Hugo Lloris will be monitored closely ahead of their trip to the Emirates this weekend.

Kulusevski returned from international duty with a muscle issue and had a scan on Wednesday but has been training on his own while captain Hugo Lloris also pulled out of the France games.

Spurs are third on the Premier League table and signed off for the international break with a 6-2 win over Leicester, showing character and strength in depth to see out some of the tricky periods in the game.

Tottenham have only won once at the Emirates since 2013, and a win for the Lillywhites will see them overtake the Gunners, the first time in the history of the North London derby that one has overtaken the other to go top of the Premier League.

Arsenal are slight favourites going into the game on Saturday - having been almost faultless since the start of the campaign - but Antonio Conte is confident some of his players will need to be given enough time to recover.

He told the press ahead of the game on Saturday: “We have to wait until tomorrow to see how some of the players respond after they returned from international duty with some problems.

“We have to wait and see and after the training with can understand where they arenathgen we can make a decision.

“Obviously we have some physical concerns but I don’t want to give any advantage to Arsenal but we need to find solutions and also not take a lotto risk because we have a lot of games coming up.”

Kulusevski has been one of the best players since joining Tottenham from Juventus in January while captain Hugo Lloris is in the form of his life and missing the game against Arsenal will be a big blow.