Spurs ready for Chelsea

Tuesday, 20/12/2011

by James Willis, Shoot’s Tottenham blogger

Tottenham got back to winning ways last week with a convincing 4-0 win over Shamrock Rovers followed up by a 1-0 win over Sunderland in the Premier League.

Despite their result against Shamrock Rovers, it was not enough to qualify for the knockout rounds of the Europa League as Rubin Kazan managed to earn the draw they needed with PAOK to finish as group runners up.

It came as a blessing, though, to many Spurs fans, and hardly one in disguise either, given the obvious need for focus in the Premier League.

There should be no doubt that the six Europa League group stage games will have been valuable to a number of the youth players as well as second and third string players who don't get to play as often.

Most notably on Thursday night, Harry Kane scored his first senior goal for Tottenham, which was the fourth of the night for the team.

The momentum was carried on into the weekend as Spurs pushed on to beat a spirited Sunderland team 1-0.

Gareth Bale was the most notable player missing from the Spurs starting XI as he was left out injured, and it wasn't long into the game before he was joined in the physio's room by fellow pacey winger Aaron Lennon.

Roman Pavlyuchenko was placed on the bench as backup to Emmanuel Adebayor, due to Jermain Defoe's minor injury. It was a stroke of good fortune for Tottenham who, one week after missing lady luck, had the tall Russian score the winning goal.

The club were clearly missing their usual pace down the wings, with Assou-Ekotto and Walker struggling to find many players out wide to link up with. It was for this reason that Tottenham had to work their chances at goal directly through the middle of the pitch.

Rafael van der Vaart was the man who eventually put Pavlyuchenko through into his scoring position, but Sandro and Luka Modric also went extremely close at points.

The small Croatian, Modric, will arguably be most annoyed at himself after missing what was seemingly an open goal with the ball bouncing perfectly at his feet.

Nevertheless, Spurs' constant pressure was enough to win the game and despite the fine margin they will no doubt be satisfied with moving back into third position in the Premier League ahead of their crucial crunch game this week against rivals Chelsea.

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