The Daily Dose is our unique nightly round-up of all things Spurs. Catch the e-Spurs Daily Dose each night exclusively here!Tonight's Dose by Matt Tumminia
A Trip to Russia, Short Memories and Injury Updates
Coming off our disappointing draw at the Lane against those classless Chavs from across London, we continue our Europa League adventure with a trip to Russia to face Anzhi Makhachkala. This Dagestan-based football club has been all over the news the last few years with their sudden investment in big name players such as Roberto Carlos, Samuel Eto’o, and Yuri Zhirkov. This massive strengthening led to some success but eventually was disbanded by a crazy owner, who is actually wanted by Interpol for corruption, and the sale or release of these same players this past summer has thrown the club back into disarray after a short period of stability. It seems the owner did not like how long the project was taking so he decided to cut costs by selling every valuable asset of the club which included a certain Willian, once close to signing with us, but is now rotting on the bench at the “club of his dreams”. Needless to say, we are favourites to beat the Russian based club as we boast a strong stable squad with plenty of quality and depth but this Anzhi side should not be underestimated as Russian clubs are notoriously tough to beat at home.
Projected Line-Up
I suspect that there will be a good deal of rotation in our squad with the likes of Brad Friedel, Zeki Fryers, Vlad Chiricheş, Sandro, Erik Lamela and Jermain Defoe all starting or playing significant minutes. No offense to Anzhi, but we should be able to put them to the sword without really getting out of 3rd gear regardless of the squad we send to Russia. I’m expecting a line-up of: Friedel; Naughton, Kaboul, Vlad, Fryers; Sandro, Holtby; Kane, Chadli, Lamela; Defoe. As for the result, I would say a win for us by a scoreline of 3-1 is realistic, hopefully we are winning by 3 or 4 by the break so we can rest a few of these players.
Short Memories, Jose?
Fallout from our draw against Chelsea this past weekend continues with AVB going back on defensive after Jose Mourinho, the not-so special one, accused our Belgian rock, Jan Vertonghen, of cheating during the match in an effort to get Fernando Torres sent off. That is interesting upon viewing the replays of the match and seeing Torres act like a little punk and scratch Jan in the face, looking almost like a spoiled little brat whose big brother just threw out her favourite Barbie doll. It seems that the FA is also interested in how Jan cheated during the match, apparently so interested that they are contemplating giving Torres an extra 3 matches to recover from this traumatic experience. Seeing this over and over makes me wonder if he wasn’t specifically instructed to exercise such dirty tactics by his boss, knowing that this would eventually frustrate the cool Belgian and allow Torres to get into his head. As a fan, I am appalled, again, by these acts but would we expect anything less from a club as classless as Chelsea? It also seems that Mr. Mourinho has forgotten the theatrics and playacting of a certain Ivorian striker who would go over any little nudge as if a sniper had shot him from 2000meters out but yes, Jan is a cheater and your club has never done anything wrong. Funny how certain people’s memories are short when it can benefit their club.
Injury Updates
Slowly but surely, we are getting all of our players back into training and integrated into the squad. Etienne Capoue will be returning to the squad after the international break, being almost fully recovered from his ankle injury suffered early in September while Aaron Lennon and Danny Rose should be available for selection this coming weekend, maybe even for the trip to Russia. Younes Kaboul should be available for the match against Anzhi after he came off 5 minutes from full time in the Capital One Cup clash with some muscle tightness. Other than these few injury updates, we are able to boast the return of a certain polarising striker to training as news of Emmanuel Adebayor being integrated back into the first squad has come out. This is not a bad thing as he does still have a role to play with the team and as I have mentioned before, when his head is right, he is quite the handful for opposing defenders.
Let us know what you think below!
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It is these games that we need to play the likes of Chiriches, Sandro, Lamela, Holtby, Kabooooooom!, who are all good enough to be first team regulars, as they need to keep up their match fitness in order to be able to step in when the injuries and suspensions start kicking in during the busy period in December/January.
ReplyDeleteWe also need to include the young'ns like Carroll & Kane playing, though probably from the bench, to help their development.
I'd also have Ade in the squad, with only Defoe and Soldado, I suspect we will need to call on him at some stage to put his money where his mouth is and become our top scorer.
Non footie related, been made redundant from the army. Would appreciate the author allowing me to plug my YouTube channel which I started for a bit of fun.
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyU0e0F45uQLG25qOJSKARg
Thank you so much.