Tottenham Hotspur v Olympiakos: Champions League – live!

Some half-time reading: Club Brugge scored a 92nd minute equaliser but then had two men sent off for their celebrations against Galatasaray. Read on …

Peep! Tottenham go in for the break trailing by the odd goal of three. They’ve been poor tonight, going two behind to goals from Youssef El Arabi and RUben Semedo. A giant stroke of luck just before half-time has enabled them to halve that deficit, however … Del Alli taking advantage of a monumental howler from Meriah, who took his eye off the ball in a most literal sense.

Olympiakos gift Spurs a goal. An Aurier cross comes into their penalty area from the right and Yassine Meriah takes a big swing at it and misses completely. Standing behind the defender, Dele Alli is in the right place at the right time and taps in from a couple of yards out.

42 min: Son tries an ambitious shot from distance, trying to curl the ball into the top bin from the inside left after Olympiakos goalkeeper Jose Sa had given the ball away with a wayward pass. It’s high, it’s wide and Spurs remain two goals behind.

40 min: Harry Kane takes the free-kick, whipping it up and down over the wall. He doesn’t whip it quite hard enough, however, and it skims off the roof of the net. Considering Tottenham won the free-kick for a perfectly clean Semedo tackle on Son that earned the defender a booking, that seems fair enough.

40 min: A Free-kick for Spurs in a good position about 30 yards from the Olympiakos goal, almost dead centre.

39 min: Dele Alli sends a high, looping cross towards the far post from the left wing, which Olympiakos goalkeeper Jose Sa claims easily. That’s a poor effort from Alli, who should have put some pace on the ball.

36 min: A case in point: Son tries to cut in from the left wing but is immediately crowded off the ball by two opponents. One of them is Guillherme, who clears the ball downfield. The same thing is happening on the other flank, whenever Lucas Moura gets on the ball.

35 min: Olympiakos look like they have 14 or 15 men on the pitch, so quick are they to crowd around any Tottenham player who receives a pass in or around their penalty area. They played well when the sides drew in Athens and they’re even more impressive tonight.

32 min: Olympiakos centre-back Yassine Mehriah tries his luck with a low drive from a long way out and it’s heart-sin-mouths time for Spurs fans as the ball fizzes narrowly wide of the left upright. Tottenham’s are looking very shaky tonight, all over the pitch. Their defence is wobbly, their midfield can’t keep possession, Dele Alli is being marked out of the game and the collective touch of the front three seems to have deserted them, although they haven’t seen a great deal of the ball.

29 min: Tottenham substitution: Eriksen replaces Dier, who gets an embrace from Mourinho as he leaves the field. “He’ll be fuming,” says Jermaine Jenas on BT Sport co-comms duty. “Taken off after 28 minutes? He’ll be fuming.” He doesn’t look particularly upset.

28 min: Christian Eriksen is about to come on for Tottenham and I think it’s Eric Dier who’ll be coming off. He hasn’t been significantly worse than any of his team-mates, but Tottenham are giving away a lot of possession in midfield.

26 min: Semedo limps off the pitch at the closest point of exit, near the Tottenham goal, helped on his way by a shove from Gazzaniga. His limp disappears as he jogs around the corner flag and down the touchline, waiting for the referee’s permission to come back on. The crowd boo his return in the strongest possible terms.

24 min: Gazzaniga is caught in no-man’s land as he comes to gather a free-kick in a crowded penalty area. Eric Dier is forced to boot the ball clear and play continues as Ruben Semedo, the goalscorer, is lying prone near the Spurs goal line after being clattered in mid-air by the Tottenham goalkeeper.

23 min: Harry Kane sends a shot fizzing wide of the Olympiakos goal after latching on to a through ball from Lucas Moura. The flag goes up – it wouldn’t have counted even if he’d had his cross-hairs aligned.

21 min: Tanguy Ndombele and Christian Eriksen are sent to warm up after 20 minutes, as Jose ponders his next move. The corner was sent towards the near post, where Winks somehow managed to scuff it across the face of his own goal. With Tottenham’s players looking pretty helpless, Semedo was quickest to react and fired home from a yard or two out.

Olympiakos double their lead. The Greek side score from a corner, taking advantage of more diabolical defending from Tottenham. Ruben Semedo pokes home from about two yards out, getting on the end of a near post flick-on from the dead ball.

18 min: With Olympiakos attacking on the break, Davinson Sanchez does brilliantly to get back and intercept a Daniel Podence shot on goal when the speedy winger looked like he’d given the central defender the slip and had only Gazzaniga to beat.

16 min: Davinson Sanchez sends a cross into the Olympiakos penalty area, aiming for Harry Kane. The striker’s first touch is a poor one and Ruben Semedo dispossesses him and clears.

13 min: A foul on Danny Rose means Spurs have a free-kick in the are between the left side of the Olympiakos penalty area and the touchline. The ball’s whipped into the penalty area by Harry Winks, Son gets a flick and Jose Sa gets down well to tip the ball around his upright for a corner. Nothing comes of it, although Sa does have a bit of a flap while clearing a second ball into his area.

12 min: Son picks up the ball on the left touchline and cuts inside. He beats two players on a penetrating run into the penalty area, but a heavy touch lets him down before he can cross or shoot and the ball runs through to Olympiakos goalkeeper Jose Sa.

10 min: Serge Aurier wins a free-kick deep in Olympiakos territory and chucks the ball to Lucas Moura. He attempts to cut inside, but runs down a blind alley and is dispossessed. That’s been the story of Tottenham’s night thus far, but it’s early days yet.

7 min: Olympiakos go ahead and it’s no more than they deserve, but Jose Mourinho will be disappointed that none of his defenders saw fit to close down the goalscorer. El Arabi picked up the ball on the inside right, cut unopposed across the edge of the penalty area and unleashed a fierce left-footed shot. It was low and into the corner, dipping on its way past the outstretched arm of Gazzaniga.

The visitors are ahead! Olympiakos take the lead courtesy of a dipping drive from Youssef El Arabi from the edge of the penalty area into the bottom left-hand corner.

4 min: Olympiakos have the first shot in anger, with Giorgos Masouras picking up a cross-field pass to the left, cutting inside and unleashing a shot from the edge of the penalty area. It stings the palms of Gazzaniga, but doesn’t trouble the goalkeeper unduly.

3 min: For Olympiakos, Daniel Podense goes on a scuttling run towards the edge of the Spurs penalty area, before picking the wrong pass and letting the ball run through to Paulo Gazzaniga. The right winger was a real menace in the corresponding fixture in Athens and gave Ben Davies a very torrid time.

2 min: There appears to be a huge contingent of Olympiakos fans in the house, and they are making their presence felt from their place in one corner of the stadium. On the field, their team is dominating possession in these very early stages.

1 min: Olympiakos kick off, their players wearing blue shirts, blue shorts with white trim and blue socks. Tottenham’s wear white shirts, shorts and socks.

Not long now: The teams line up in the tunnel and are led out by skippers Harry Kane and Omar Elabdellaoul respectively. It is a mild and dry night in north London, where a phalanx of photographers has congregated in front of the home dug-out to get pictures of Tottenham’s manager as he takes his seat init for the first time.

Elsewhere on BT Sport: Peter Crouch is a pundit on the studio panel, but barely able to speak as he is really, really hoarse. It is very funny. I suspect some runner will be given the task of funnelling honey and lemon down his throat for the first half, as he’s seriously struggling.

Jose Mourinho speaks: “I expect an amazing reception for the team, which is the only thing that matters tonight,” he says to BT Sport’s Des Kelly, upon being asked what kind of welcome he is expecting on his home debut. “The team, the performance and the result.”

On his team selection: “We thought that we should give that little bit of stability to the team,” he says. “We believe that two days of recovery when you win is enough for you to be ready to play.

On the inclusion of Danny Rose: “Rose is a different player to Davies, but he has been training with us from the first minute we came and knows his role.”

An email: “Not sure if anyone’s aware of this early 70s psych-folk classic by the Watersons,” writes Matt Snow, introducing Danny Rose.

Tottenham v Olympiakos line-ups

Tottenham (4-2-3-1): Gazzaniga, Aurier, Sanchez, Alderweireld, Rose, Dier, Winks, Lucas, Alli, Son, Kane.

Subs: Austin, Vertonghen, Sessegnon, Sissoko, Ndombele, Eriksen, Lo Celso.

Olympiakos (4-3-3): Sa, Elabdellaoui, Semedo, Meriah, Tsimikas, Camara, Guilherme, Bouchalakis, Podence, El Arabi, Masouras.

Subs: Allain, Benzia, Guerrero, Valbuena, Papadopoulos, Torosidis, Randjelovic.

Just the one change for Tottenham: Danny Rose comes in for the injured Ben Davies at left-back, Otherwise Jose Mourinho has picked the same team that started against West Ham on Saturday. There had been talk that Tanguy Ndombele might come in to midfield in place of Harry Winks, but the England international keeps his place.

Tonight’s referee

Bulgarian match official Georgi Kabakov is on coin-toss duty tonight. From Plovdiv, he was also in charge of Jose Mourinho’s most recent Champions League game, the aforementioned Manchester United defeat at the hands of Valencia.

Fun fact: Jose Mourinho will be the fifth different manager that Olympiakos has gone up against in as many games in this season’s Champions League matches.

Changes in personnel at Bayern Munich and Tottenham mean Martins has already stood in the adjacent technical area to Mauricio Pochettino, Vladan Milojevic, Niko Kovac and Hansi Flick. Tonight, he gets to watch Jose gesticulating at close quarters.

Jose Mourinho speaks

“I love the competition as much as everyone in football.,” said Tottenham’s new manager, before going on to demonstrate some of his new found humility. “Not everyone has the privilege to be a Champions League winner but I have done it twice. I would love to win it for a third time but this is not the moment to speak about it – this is the moment to qualify.”

Asked about his team’s chances of winning the tournament, he was typically bullish. “With these boys, I will never be afraid of any Champions League match,” he said. “We need to qualify, that’s the focus. Only when my teams arrive in the quarter-finals, I start thinking we can win it. At this moment, we are far from it and have to qualify. Give me time to work, put my ideas to these boys and I’ll go to any stadium to play against any big opponents in Europe or England and we won’t be afraid of anyone.”

Pedro Martins speaks

“We are here against a very good team but we have ambitions,” said the Olympiakos manager, ahead of a game his team must win if they are to keep their faint hopes of qualifying for the knockout stages alive. “We have done it before. If four months ago someone had said to us we’d be in the Champions League group stage and top of the Greek league, we’d be happy.”

Early team news

Ben Davies will be absent for Tottenham tonight after missing training yesterday with an ankle injury and could be replaced by Danny Rose. Erik Lamela remains sidelined with a thigh injury, while Jan Vertonghen is back in training but not expected to start.

Davinson Sanchez and Toby Alderweireld should start in the heart of the defence, while Tanguy Ndombele is also back in training after recovering from injury and could start in midfield at the expense of Harry Winks or Eric Dier.

For Olympiakos, midfielder Konstantinos Fortounis remains sidelined with an ACL injury he suffered back in July, while central defender Pape Abou Cisse is also a major doubt.

Under new management, Spurs go into tonight’s match against their Greek visitors knowing a win will guarantee their advancement to the knockout stages of the Champions League. A draw will be enough too, but only if Red Star fail to beat Bayern Munich in Belgrade.

One game into his reign at Tottenham, Jose Mourinho’s last involvement in the Champions League was as manager of a Manchester United side that lost 2-1 against Valencia last December. While United had already qualified for the knockout stages before kick-off in that particular defeat, he will certainly be hoping for a better performance from his new team on his first appearance in the home dug-out at White Hart Lane tonight.

Kick-off is at 8pm, but stay tuned for team news and build-up in the meantime.