just seen this on independant site, Emmanuel Adebayor's participation in Tottenham's game against Inter Milan is in doubt after the striker missed training this morning. Adebayor was carried off on a stretcher during Sunday's north London derby with an injury, and the Togo striker was absent from the part of this morning's training session that was open to the media ahead of tomorrow's Europa League clash against the Italian giants. Mousa Dembele also came off during Sunday's game, but did take part in training this morning, as did Tom Huddlestone, who has been out with a knee injury of late. Clint Dempsey's calf injury prevented him from training today. good news about dembelle though
Well it's not ideal, by any means, but it might just be precautionary. We might be forced to give both Adebayor and Defoe a half each. This whole situation's been badly handled from the start, but we've not been particularly lucky with injuries this season, have we? Pretty standard for us though, I guess.
Adebayor has been poor this season anyway. Worst comes to worst, we'll adapt, throw bale into a false 9 position or play Defoe until he has to come off, and resort to throwing Obika on. Besides, I wouldn't want to risk further injury to any of our strikers with the nightmare run in we have.
I suppose there's been 1 upside to this striker debacle. - It's provided the forum with lots of good debates and conversations ever since we didn't sign one in Jan! How considerate of Daniel.
I don't think we have been particularly unlucky with injuries tbh. I think Ade and Dembele should sit this one out and focus on Sunday as Liverpool wont be easy. I would play Holtby in Dembele's place and Gylfi out wide. Looking on their forum they all seem to think they will park the bus and concede the posession game, to styme lennon and Bales pace. in that case I don't think Dembele's pace or ability to run past ppl will be as important when compared to an end to end game such as the Arsenal one. The team I think we/AVB will go with is this (would prefer Lloris but hey ho) : Friedel Walker Gallas Verthongan Disco Parker Holtby Lennon Bale Gylfi Defoe
haha join the club SG, it's been like it for weeks. are you getting a message come up after you've confirmed the message reply, that says " "Leave page" or "cancel" " ?
Sunday is - at least in my mind - more important than the Inter game, so I wouldn't want to run the risk of playing either Ade, Dembele or indeed Defoe if the is a chance of aggravating injuries. Would be great to tear them apart with pace and width etc, but as has been mentioned, Inter are hardly likely to produce a performance of free-running attacking football themselves and our best options might be back in Milan having secured a 0-0 at home. So I would be inclined to go with a hard-working unit to ensure an overall solid formation. Would probably opt for Caulker instead of Verts and Naughton instead of Walker to save them for the Mousers and neither of those changes would seriously undermine our defensive strength. Benny has been out for a while, so fitness and recovery is less of an issue. The same goes for Parker, although Jake could certainly play a role in the 2nd half. My main concern is the likely treatment dished out to Bale - you can almost hear them planning those assaults.... Lastly, in an ideal world, we would have a replacement for Lennon who has played a helluva lot of games this season. Unfortunately the logical replacement is at QPR!!!!
click "Leave page", it's already posted your message, although it might not seem like it has. the other thing it's doing, is taking you straight to the "go advanced" page without the "leave page" message. - This is also the same thing and the message will have been posted. it's happening to loads of us and has been doing it for a while. Inda suggested that it's a script error in the HTML. (way over my head). Unfortunately, it hasn't been sorted out yet.
I agree with all your coments Relayer prefering Spurs to concentrate on the accumulation the requisite points to bring Champions League football back to the lane next season. As we know, the fanancial benefits of CL football are almost guaranteed to out-weigh the finincial benefits on offer from other such competitions., but I believe the biggest benefit (from qualifying CL) will be the 'better chance' of keep our best player(s) for another year.
Just click the cross in the red box to get rid of it, leave the other boxes alone, that gets rid of the window without sending the post. Don't know if its co-incidence but that 'leave page' window pops up if you're too quick to click 'last page' after you select a thread too...annoying.
Plus finishing below the Goons again would be so hard to take. The only thing that would make that OK is if we actually won the cup otherwise all major efforts should be on the league.
I think I'd do something really weird and try and play Caulker as a makeshift striker. The lad can certainly head a ball and often is the first to the ball in a scramble. He's a big lad as well and could put his weight about, the Italians wouldn't like that. If we win it's a master stroke, if we lose it's because Levy didn't sign an striker. A no-lose situation for AVB. Lucky I'm not the manager isn't it? Another Ramos or what?
I've come around 180 degrees on playing a strong team vs. Inter. If the idea is never change a winning game, the thing to do would be to field almost as strong a team as possible here. That's what we've been doing. We have decent cover everywhere, if you count Bale as a third striker. Everyone's desperate for playing time and more success. I hate to rest Dembele because we do so much worse when he doesn't play. On the other hand, maybe it kills two birds with one stone by giving Holtby a chance to start. I'd bring in Caulker since Inter may be parking the bus, and we may need a goal from set pieces. Friedel Vertonghen/Dawson Caulker Beni Holtby/Dembele Parker Gylfi Bale Lennon Defoe
I remember years ago at Sutton,they were short on striker,(all injured),they used their centre half,John Rains as a makeshift C/F,he finished 2nd top scorer,with 25 goals.
