Both sides have put pictures from the game up on Facebook. Here's ours: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/...05.1073741939.351687753504&type=3&uploaded=10 Looks like the same crowd from the City game! Friedel, Naughton, Fryers, Capoue, Holtby, Sigurdsson and a few youth players also featured.
Your computer must have blockers on all things Wet Spam. Sandro played the first half, Verts, Kaboul and Paulinho played 60 minutes. Sandro even had a haircut for the occasion... please log in to view this image
Brazil's central midfield pairing closing down some random youth player from Dagenham, watched by a French international defender. Little recent media fanfare about our injuries, though.
Seem to remember a similar not looking forward to it theme on this thread last season and spurs won fairly comfortably in the end Although the media like to harp on about our away record as if its akin to relegation fodder,ive never seen any balanced reasoning given to it. When Pellegrini took over he changed the emphasis of how we play from mancinis dour defensive set up to playing with a high line and full on attack mode which,without Kompany for much of the start,took the defence a bit of getting used to. What it has highlighted is a real vulnerability down our left side of defence as Clichy has regresssed quite badly,Kolorov has never been a competent defender,Lescott is only ok if nowhere near a football,Nastasic has forgotten how to tackle so just fouls all the time on the edge of the box and Demichellis is basically a slower more ponderous version of Ramon Vega. Hence why we never look particularly assured although since the horrible annual defeat at sunderland,weve been on quite a run. Quite often amazes me what coaches do in preparation to playing us as some get it spot on like Pulis with Palace,Bruce with Hull,Rodgers with liverpool and Pochettino with the saints who all pressed the space and didnt let us play and were unlucky to not come away with some or all the points,and others like avb and hughton with norwich at the etihad were pretty clueless,if not a bit naive. Having a more or less fully fit squad will help to allow for plenty of changes from the watford cup game on saturday without particularly weakening the side and expect we will line up for spurs like this Hart Zabaleta Kompany DeMichellis Kolorov Fernandinho Yaya Navas Aguero Silva Negredo Introduction of Huddlestone and Holtby won the game for spurs last year as they nullified yayas influence and we were overran in midfield,be interesting how Sherwood goes about it tactically because hes seen from the no2 position how to play against us and how not to as well. Take a draw and walk away now without hesitation
I'll admit Eirksen is a little better, but Holtby is such a good player IMO as CAM or playing behind a striker. How's about we play an entire second 11 in the Europa, and have them play our first 11 regularly. If they start beating them, then they get to play the PL games. Right now the second 11 would be (assuming no injuries, and IMO) Soldado Holtby Chadli Sandro Gylfi Lamela Fryers Dawson Kaboul Naughton Friedel I'm not so sure it's any weaker on paper than our starters.
If you let them have the ball and time, then yes, and that I hope is the gameplan, you're not going to stop them having the ball, but you can remove the time element with a MF prepared for a real shift.
Man City destroyed us once and of course may do so again, but I hope the team plays with some constructive anger. I'd be concerned if I were Man City that we will. We've had two horrendous losses so far (four, really, if you count the two losses to West Ham). Whether we're able to get something positive out of the return matches may say a lot about our mental strength or lack of it.
