As expected, Kyle Walker makes his long awaited return from injury and is set to play some part in this evening’s Europa League tie with Besiktas. Head Coach Mauricio Pochettino confirmed the news while revealing that a number of men have stayed behind ahead of this weekend’s Premier League action.
“Ade is back home, a personal matter,” said Mauricio. “After that, Kyle Walker is back and we will decide after training the starting 11 and who will be on the bench.
“We have a strong squad so some players have stayed in London – Vertonghen, Kane, Mason, Bentaleb, Eriksen and Naughton.”
Federico Fazio is back after suspension but there was no confirmation regarding injured players including Andros Townsend and Nacer Chadli. Harry Winks is expected to get a chance – and may possibly even start – making this one of the tougher starting XIs to predict.
Here’s our best guess but what’s yours?
Would like to see Dier start at CB and not Chiriches.
Chadli needs game time if fit.
I agree. We now have a decent fallback set up with Walker and Davies. I would also like Dier to start at CB to prove his worth with Kaboul or even Chiriches (but I don’t rate him at all).
I did want Dier to pair with Vertonghen in our PL games earlier but Fazio been putting on some decent and consistent performances in recent games. Although I do want Dier to play there as he reminds me of a right-sided Vertonghen with some extra errors such as lacks experience and often caught lapsing.
I think our defence and GK is starting to look very good. It’s probably our strongest part so far. They do say build from the back, so I hope our attacks can be much more sharper and quicker with their play. Eriksen has hit form of late, but those around him had been woeful. Especially Lamela whom I like so much yet is the one the keeps performing the worst. Dispossessed too many times, does ineffective tricks that delays our play, and eventually takes too long to make a pass when we’re on a rapid counter-attack. Kinda reminds me of Bale, when he was weak and easily brushed aside. But Harry Redknapp gave him some tough sessions to roughen him up, and now he’s strong and doesn’t get bullied around.
Think Lamela needs to strengthen up to be a better player like Bale. He’s far too light-weighted, and it can be witnessed in almost all PL games.
Also, MP needs to change his tactics a bit and stop being so stubborn. When he started using wingers to create width our game generally improves. Besides that I want to see some of our underperforming stars to play Europa then if they play well they get to promote to PL starting line up. But MP needs to have consistent first 11 in his PL team, as I believe inconsistency is costing us. An unsettled squad is not what we want.
K – Vorm (talk about needing game time)
CB – Dier, Kaboul (should be his only feature time for now)
FB – Walker, Rose
Mids – Stambouli (more forward than Nabs) and Capoue
Wings – Lennon, Chadli
Striker – Soldado
I would love to see some of the young guys come on at the end. Agree with Billy that Poch has seemed stubborn. Look how long it took him to finally start Kane? And the Lennon situation last weekend was embarassing: How could our main man not see the need for width? Stambouli should have at least been in 1 of those 2 games as well.
Forgot to include a attacking CM…hmmmm……It’s almost a question of who NOT to play: Dembele (holds too much and rarely finds that solid forward pass), nor Lamela (see Dembele comments, except Eric is way too much in his own predictable “trick n flicks” world).
I guess I would play Chadli in the middle and Townsend as A LEFT winger (not inverted; same problem as Lamela in terms of dribbling in his own world and almost always into the middle).
Vorm
Walker – Dier – Chiriches – Rose
Paulinho – Stambouli – Dembele
————Lamela- Lennon————-
Soldado
Vorm
Walker – Dier – Chiriches – Rose
Stambouli – Dembele
Lamela- Paulinho –Chadli————-
Soldado
I don’t think Walker will start. He’ll probably be on the bench.