We have three players called up for England and every one of them picks up some sort of injury. It’s enough to make you think that internationals should be banned.

Yet with every cloud, we are reliably informed that there is a silver lining. It seems that it’s not just England players that get injured in internationals. Germany’s Per Mertesacker fractured the curve of his eyebrow last night and as a result, the Werder Bremen defender will miss the opening Champions League game against Tottenham.

Bremen also have Naldo injured, so who will line up alongside Simon Kjaer at the heart of their defence next week? Well it looks like it will be someone that we’re all familiar with. The former Arsenal catastrophe Mikael Silvestre was signed by Bremen just before the transfer deadline and due to their injury crisis, looks likely to make his debut for them this weekend against Bayern Munich.

I didn’t think it was possible to be more excited about this match, but now I am.

Fancy winning a new Spurs kit a week before the official release? If so, follow @BeInThatNumber on Twitter, where you’ll get details of a treasure hunt to win the new Puma kit.

More details and footage of Ledley, Crouch and Defoe miming, can be found in the video below.

If you had asked any Spurs fan what type of player we needed to sign this summer, the majority would have said that we could do with a striker.

Instead we bought a reserve goalkeeper, an ex-Gooner defender, a defensive midfielder and most impressively of all, Rafael van der ‘bloody’ Vaart. The lone striker that we so clearly require remains elusive, but I think that we should just pretend that we got him anyway.

Are any of Jermain Defoe, Peter Crouch, Roman Pavlyuchenko or Robbie Keane particularly suited to playing as a lone striker? Not really, but another way to look at this is to ask whether our midfielders are better suited to a 4-4-2 or a 4-5-1/4-3-3.

With the purchase of Van der Vaart, it’s going to be very difficult to squeeze all our midfield riches into four spots. Assuming that we would play either Palacios or Sandro as a defensive midfielder in away games, that would mean that we would have to pick three players from Van der Vaart, Modric, Kranjcar, Huddlestone, Lennon and Bale, while Bentley, Jenas, Dos Santos and O’Hara would also be kicking their heels.

We’ve got to look at where our strengths are and it’s in the middle of the pitch. We’ve arguably got the best batch of midfielders in the country, so let’s pick five of them and make ourselves very hard to beat.

Van der Vaart has scored 120 goals in 327 senior appearances. The best spell of his career was at Hamburg, where he scored 16, 14 and then 18 goals, over three seasons. That’s as many as any of our strikers are likely to score and we need to play him just behind the front man, rather than out on the flanks.

So who does he play behind? Pavlyuchenko is the player that I think could be the best in the role, but whether he could really be bothered is another matter. It takes hard work to be a lone striker, which is not exactly his forte and he tends to run hot and cold.

Defoe’s hold up play has got much better and he could do a job for us at home. When you consider that he rarely scores away anyway, it wouldn’t make much difference if we didn’t play him too often, when on the road.

Crouch’s problem as a lone striker is the fact that he’s too slow and immobile. However, if you played him up front with fast players like Lennon, Dos Santos or Bale on the flanks, then it would take a very brave defence to push up high, to take advantage of Crouch’s slowness. When we were forced to play with just Crouch up front against Stoke, Bale and Lennon both had effective games.

So that’s three options. None of them are brilliant, but if we choose horses for courses and rotate them according to form and injury, then it would allow our star midfielders to shine. The loser in this rationale is Robbie Keane, who is better suited to playing deep, but you can’t help but feel that his Spurs career is more or less over anyway.

We know exactly what we can and can’t do with 4-4-2. Van der Vaart’s signing means that Harry surely has no choice but to take a look at what a different formation can offer.

It’s a shame that we don’t have a Fabiano, Huntelaar or even a Gyan to really put the cherry on the cake, but what can you do? Let’s make the best of what we’ve got until the summer, when we can start dreaming of the striker that will make all our dreams come true.

When Roman Pavlyuchenko came on against Young Boys the other night, the crowd immediately started the Super Pav song.

The chant made me feel sorry for Peter Crouch. At the time he had scored twice and by the end of the game he had claimed his hat-trick, but there was no singing of his name.

Along with a few others, Crouch is one of the players who we don’t have a song for. You never even hear something as uninspired as ‘There’s only one Peter Crouch’.

I know that he’s a player that divides a lot of people, but surely we should be singing in appreciation of anyone who scores a hat-trick? Or are we all big Abbie Clancy fans and still upset with Crouchie for his philandering ways?

This is the man who got us into the Champions League with his goal against Manchester City, before putting in a great performance on Wednesday. It wasn’t just the goals. Crouch was all over the place and tracked back to make several good tackles.

But that still wasn’t enough to get the fans singing and instead we were busy praising another striker. What has Pavlyuchenko really done at Spurs to warrant one song, let alone the two that we have for him? ‘Super Pav’? It should be ‘Occasionally super, but generally can’t be bothered, Pav’.

To alleviate the boredom of a summer distinctly lacking in entertaining football, I planted some carrot seeds in our garden in Cardozo Road. You can imagine the horror when I peered down from my bedroom window, into the garden, to see my seeds being dislodged by a ginger cat digging a hole to urinate in. That’s right, i said a ginger cat. The good news is that no other cat is likely to come and do the same. Why? Because the the ginger cat has marked its territory. Any other cat that enters the garden will smell urine and be instantly deterred.

Similar behaviour can be seen in humans. We tend to feel both protective and mentally attuned when occupying our own perceived territory. One need only look at my own family to see this: Nan doesn’t like venturing out of the house; and she is certainty very cautious about letting people in.

So what does this have to do with football? These observations help explain the uncanny fact that teams are significantly more likely to win when playing at home. This is a statisitcal fact: Spurs won 14 matches at home last season, compared to just 7 away. But here is a scientific fact: in the academic field of sports psychology, Neave & Wolfson (2003) find strong evidence for what they term “territoriality” in explaining the home advantage phenomenon – or in their words “a protective response to an invasion of one’s perceived territory”. These guys reached their conclusion after measuring football players’ salivary testosterone (a hormone associated with aggression and territoriality) and found increased concentrations before home games than away or training games.

Of course there are other explanations for home advantage – including easier travel arrangements and a higher level of crowd support. But the influence of territoriality cannot be denied. Indeed, at White Hart Lane on match days, nobody is more territorial than Wilson Palacios. When a player steps into his domain, the Spurs midfielder excels at taking back what he sees as rightfully his – the ball. Last season, Sergeant Wilson dispossessed more people than Father Gabriele Amorth – Rome’s world famous exorcist.

But with good home form comes poor away form. The “great defeat” to the Young Boys of Berne last week was a prime example. But lets not forget our annual drumming at Old Trafford – a regular event in the Spurs calendar for too long now. In fact, Spurs have not won an away match against one of the ‘big four’ (old classification, of course) since 25th August 1993. Teddy Sheringham scored twice that day against Liverpool. And Culture Beat’s Mr Vain was top of the UK singles chart.

Away form is imperative for a good season. This is even truer now as Spurs enter the Champions League (I assume good home form will be enough to get us through tomorrow). Nothing will be more challenging than a possible away fixture at Barcelona’s Nou Camp. But improving our away form is easier said than done. Neave & Wolfson have no answer to this. One idea would be for the Spurs players to spend more time warming up on the away pitch before the match – to soften the mentally jarring effect of playing on foreign turf. But who knows if this will be enough. I invite the readers of this blog to leave their own suggestions below.

If all else fails, the team could of course draw lessons from the ginger cat of Cardozo Road. Twenty minutes before a big away match, the Spurs team captain should nip out onto the pitch and empty himself. This would effectively mark the away pitch as Spurs territory. It would confuse the opposition, and give Spurs the much needed psychological edge. Let’s look forward to the new season. The pitch is our garden, and Ledley King, our ginger cat.

Jonathan Woodgate could be forced to retire at the age of 30 as injury continues to blight his career.

Woodgate suffered a groin injury last November and despite travelling to both Australia and America in a bid to solve the issue, he remains some way away from returning to the Spurs first team. The centre-back is about to have surgery in what Harry Redknapp has described as the player’s “last chance” of recovery.

With Woodgate making only three appearances since the beginning of last season, it seems certain he won’t be included in Redknapp’s 25 man squad list for the first half of this season. The Spurs manager has already been planning for a season without Woodgate, signing William Gallas recently. With Ledley King suffering from chronic knee problems, Redknapp was desperate to bring in more cover to compete with Michael Dawson, Sebastian Bassong and Younes Kaboul. The rumour mill suggests there could be more signings before the close of the transfer window.

Before his latest major injury, Woodgate had enjoyed two seasons which were relatively trouble free, first with Middlesbrough then Spurs. However, since leaving his first club, Leeds, the centre-back’s career has been plagued by injury which has robbed England of one of the most naturally gifted centre backs around.

Spanish giants Real Madrid thought highly enough of the defender to spend £13.5 million on him when they took him to Spain from Newcastle. His spell with Madrid didn’t start off well – on his debut he scored an own goal and was then sent off. He never really recovered from that start and suffered various injuries, making only nine appearances overall. Woodgate returned to his home town club Middlesbrough, initially on loan then permanently.

He was impressive in his two years for Boro, convincing Spurs to spend £7 million on him. Woodgate has made fewer than 50 appearances for Spurs since the move and it’s clear to see why Redknapp is losing patience with him. Though as the highlight of his Spurs’ career came when Woodgate scored the winning goal against Chelsea in extra time of the 2008 League Cup final, some would say that the £7m was well spent.

It would be a real shame for football if Woodgate is forced to retire. Despite his early career controversies, he became one of the league’s most skilful and passionate centre-backs who would have surely added more international caps to the eight he achieved earlier in his career. The White Hart Lane faithful will be hoping they see Woodgate in a Spurs shirt once again, but right now the signs do not look good.

Though it would be something of a personal tragedy for Woodgate were he to be forced to retire, it might actually be best thing for Spurs and allow us to plan for the future. It’s a harsh statement, but football is a harsh world.

With Harry Redknapp failing to do anything but bring a smile to Spurs fans’ faces since his arrival, is this the year his favoured 4-4-2 may need to be replaced by a less exciting, but more effective, 4-5-1 formation away from home in the Champions League?

With the minimum of disrespect intended to Young Boys, Tottenham will be playing far bigger, and far more clinical, sides should progress through to the group stages. The Spurs betting tips suggest they will win at home against the Swiss side, so the manager should have at least one eye on the next round.

No matter what tactical decisions Redknapp decides to make, he will at the very least need to look at how to get the best out of Wilson Palacios, a man who has gone missing since his bright start in a Spurs shirt.

With an effective holding midfielder now being a requirement for successful teams, the manager has a limited amount of time left before the transfer window slams shut, to decide as to whether Palacios and the incoming Sandro, are able to make the grade this season in the Champions League.

Another man who could be worried about Spurs’ step up is Michael Dawson. Having been one of the top performers in the Premier League last season, earning himself a place in England’s World Cup squad, Dawson did little to cover himself in glory in the game against Young Boys, with critics suggesting that his performance was a demonstration of how a lack of pace limits his game.

Redknapp has never managed at Champions League level before, but he certainly has the ability needed to make the big decisions. However, the competition is a new experience for almost everyone at the club so there’s bound to be a few teething problems. If things do go wrong, those in charge of Spurs need to make sure they don’t overreact as by doing so they could damage the club’s long-term ambitions.

When the second leg of their European tie is played, Spurs will have a another match under their belts and the Tottenham v Stoke betting suggests they will have three Premier League points as well.

On This Day In Spurs History: 9th August

1969 – On this day in 1969, the Football League season kicked off. Spurs lost 3-1 away to Leeds, with Jimmy Greaves scoring our solitary goal.

Spurs Goal Of The Day: 9th August

Glenn Hoddle v Watford

Spurs In The News: 9th August

The Sun features Loic Remy stunning the football world by preferring a move to Spurs over Stoke.

The Mirror thinks that Everton are interested in Peter Crouch.

In The Daily Mail, Harry speculates on whether The Scum are better than England.

The Daily Express reports that Harry has been spying on Young Boys.

The Guardian claim that Villa are ready to offer Ashley Young a new contract to keep him from our clutches.

Harry tells The Independent that we could win the league if he gets the players he wants.

Best Of The Web: 9th August

For those that missed it, The Spoiler has footage of Javier Hernandez scoring with his face against Chelsea.

James Brown looks at life with Leeds in the lower divisions, for The Sabotage Times.

So we will begin our Champions League journey (and hopefully not end it) against Young Boys of Switzerland.

I think it’s fair to say that this is a draw that will pretty much please everyone. I was certainly willing us to be drawn against the Swiss, rather than Sampdoria or Kiev.

We’re away first, with the opening leg to be played on either August 17th or 18th, while our first taste of Champions League football at White Hart Lane will come on either August 24th or 25th.

It will make a change for us season ticket holders to get a decent opening cup match as one of our two ‘freebies’, rather than a home Carling Cup tie against some lower division nonentities.

I for one can’t wait. Come on you Spurs!

We are now about three months since THAT night at Eastlands. The excitement and noise have died down and we can now begin to look forward to the new season.

As I write this, the squad from last season hasn’t changed at all. The arrival of Sandro is not expected until the end of August and nobody has left (yet). Despite this, we have been linked with different players on a daily basis but nothing, so far, has happened.

There has, however, been our very public pursuit of Joe Cole. Personally, I am not too distraught that we didn’t get him. He would have been a good addition to the squad but would he have played every week? I am not so sure he would.

Depending upon which paper you read, and on which day, it seems that Jermain Defoe is the only striker safe. Pav, Robbie Keane and Peter Crouch have all been linked with moves away. Unless we can get anybody better then we need to hold onto them all to give us options for the games ahead. If we were to let anyone go, I would personally let Keane leave as he has not been the same player since he returned from Liverpool.

There are rumours about both Huntelaar and Bellamy arriving. Both would give us good options – Huntelaar especially as he could play upfront alone which would seem to be the plan for Europe.

One thing is for sure, we need another top centre half. Ledley’s knees are not improving and it only seems a matter of time before Woodgate has to retire. Dawson and Bassong were both immense last season but I am not convinced that Bassong is up to the Champion’s League (fingers crossed!). Adding a reliable, international, performer would boost the squad and would take the pressure off Harry to play Ledley week in and week out.

Besides another goalscorer and a new centre half, I don’t think we are too far away. Admittedly, Villarreal did give us a thumping but most of the team had just flown back from America and the World Cup players had only just returned to training. However, the result was still worrying and shows that the step up to the Champion’s League will not be an easy one particularly as Villarreal finished seventh in La Liga last year and are not even in the competition.

The Champion’s League will have a key influence on the season. Will the club see it or the league as the priority? For me, they should have equal importance. If we want the club to grow then we have to aim to be in the Champion’s League season in and season out. That means performing well in the league or winning the Champion’s League – the year will end in one!

In terms of the league, getting into the top four will be a challenge. Manchester City continue to spend big but as last year showed, you can buy players but not a team. United and Chelsea continue to be strong but The Goons look the most vulnerable of the so-called ‘Top Four’. One thing is for sure, if Fabregas does leave, so do their top four hopes.

With all this in mind we have to repeat or better, last year’s league performance. As Tom Huddlestone said recently we will have to “win ugly” at times. The win is the important thing and at times the performance will have to come second.

This season could be a memorable one for our beloved boys. With a couple of good signings we can look forward with real hope. I can’t wait to kick off against, and beat, Manchester City on August 14th. In that week we also have the Champion’s League qualifier. What a week – bring it on. Come on you Spurs!