Normally you would go into an away match against a team stuck in the relegation zone with a sense of confidence, even if it would generally turn out to be misguided.
The match tonight against Wolves is different, because of their 1-0 win at White Hart Lane earlier this season. In many ways that was our most disappointing result of the season. Here was a team that we were meant to whip to within an inch of their lives and yet we had no answer to their dogged defending. Stoke and Hull have been depressing, but at least we created loads of chances against them and can say that it was just one of those days.
Having scored an early goal, Wolves managed to completely nullify us. Now we have to make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself.
We would be particularly unlucky if Wolves were to score another early goal, leaving them to be able to concentrate purely on defending their lead. You’d like to think that at home they will strive to get a win and therefore give us the space to attack on the break, but I’m not sure if this will be the case.
In my interview yesterday with Thomas Baugh from Wolves Blog, he stated that Mick McCarthy has gradually been picking more negative sides as the season has progressed. McCarthy proved his pragmatism by picking a reserve team against Manchester United, to ensure that his side won against Burnley, so he’s clearly not afraid to pick and choose the battles that he thinks Wolves can win.
I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if Wolves were content to play for a draw against us. If that’s the case then we just have to careful not to fall into panic mode too early and start to just whack balls up to Crouch from unpromising positions. Play the Tottenham way and the chances should come.
In terms of our team, I wouldn’t expect any changes other than Bassong coming in for King. The thing that really annoyed me about the draw with Villa, was Harry’s reluctance to bring on any substitutes. Kranjcar and Gudjohnsen are surely players capable of changing a game and if the team on the pitch get to 60-70 minutes without scoring, then we’ve got to make changes.
With the news that Lennon may be available for our game at Wigan, let’s hope that David Bentley is spurred on to produce another big performance. His set-pieces created our best chances against Villa and may prove to be the difference between one point and all three tonight.
Ultimately this is a team that we should have been spanking back in December and with no Robbie Keane to blame if things go wrong, then there’s really no excuses now.
Come on you Spurs!
There’s always Jenas to blame if we lose or draw, lets hope he’s involved so this excuse stands up…