Spurs are on their way to the Ukraine for Thursday night’s Europa league clash with Dnipro and the visitors are favourites to progress to the next round. However, we only head the betting by a narrow margin for tomorrow night’s first leg so what can we expect from our opponents?
Dnipro currently sit in fourth place in the Ukrainian Premiership with Europa League football virtually guaranteed for next season. Juande Ramos’ side have 32 points from 16 games and currently sit six points behind leaders Shakhtar with a game in hand.
There is one relatively familiar name in the ranks in former Blackburn striker Nikola Kalinic who was once, very briefly, linked with a move to White Hart Lane. The Croatian has maintained his scoring ratio from his Premier League days with just four goals from 13 games while a bigger threat should come from Yevhen Seleznyov who has eight in seventeen.
Yevhen Konoplyanka is the other familiar face for those who followed the January transfer window. The winger / second striker looks likely to leave Dnipro in the summer but for now he will have been identified as a major threat by Tottenham.
Meanwhile, former manager Juande Ramos sits in the dugout after attempting a mini war of words with Daniel Levy last week.
Spurs are on offer for as little as 1/5 with Stan James to qualify but are out at 9/5 with Bet365 to win on the night.
Hope we can give some youngsters and newly recovered players a run in both the legs but I wouldn’t use any of our first team as they need to be rested for the important Norwich match on Sunday. Hope Kane gets a couple and would be fab to see Lamela in action – he really is class the lad.
It will be interesting to see the team Tim puts out. I would like to see Chadli and Soldado get run outs. They have been poor for Spurs so far but I think the potential is there.