Tag: Christian Eriksen

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Spurs 3-0 Villa: Final Thoughts on a Forgettable Season

Where was this lickety-split brand of football when we needed it earlier in the season? Throughout the first half, and even at 0-0, the one-touch interplay was slicker than a young bounder rolling into the office in braces and a shiny pair of cufflinks. Admittedly it was against a Villa side that looked suspiciously like it had been plucked from their mob of (rather mischievously entertaining) supporters, but nevertheless. Rollicking stuff. If ever there were an award for The Best 45 Minutes of Football At The Most Pointless Juncture of the Season, our heroes would be amongst the red-hot nominees.

Credit to Tactics Tim, in his valedictory charge, for spying that the opposition were but fan-based doppelgangers and accordingly going with two upfront plus a midfielder instructed to bomb forward and beyond. With Sandro holding fort, and Eriksen and Sig surreptitiously drifting infield towards that fun-filled centre, we had options a-plenty, leaving the various competition-winners entrusted with the Villa shirt for one day with little to do but step aside obligingly and let their ‘keeper face things single-handedly. And then as a particularly cruel additional prank they took a pop at him themselves, for our second. With friends like that, eh?

So tip-top was the build-up play in that first half that even our mishap-riddled full-back pair looked worthy of the epithet “Actual Professional Footballer”, Messrs Rose and Naughton taking time out from their season’s worth of misplaced passes to ping in a couple of wicked crosses and diagonals. Moreover, having spent all season resolutely knocking the ball sideways or backwards, Paulinho suddenly discovered the joys of actually progressing forward, in a manner vaguely akin to a blind man having the veil removed from his eyes, albeit with marginally less emotional impact. The opening goal was marvellously crafted, with the applause at AANP Towers ringing loudest for the cheeky, dinked lay-off provided by sideways merchant himself in the build-up. More was to come from Paulinho moments later, including a slide-rule pass for someone or other to blaze wide, proof indeed that after a full season the lad has finally begun watching and learning from Master Eriksen.

Naturally things tailed off in the second half, a gentlemen’s agreement having been brokered at the interval guaranteeing that all 22 of them they could all gently doze off – and that was that. The season that could not end soon enough has ended, the Sherwood era has (presumably) ground to an angry halt and the glorious Europa journey will be ours once more. Huzzah! If anything I rather suspect that the coming weeks will be a dashed sight more interesting around N17 than those just gone. Eyes peeled, as end of season awards will imminently this way come.

Shameless Plug Alert – Lest ye be feeling bereft of inane witterings and lilywhite marvels already, by all means browse the nearest bookstore for AANP’s own book, Spurs’ Cult Heroes, which continues to decorate coffee tables and prop open doors the across the country.

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West Ham 2-0 Spurs: Two More Entries for the Comedy Catalogue

Credit to our heroes for their ingenuity. In a season in which sacrificial slaughters seem to have taken place on a monthly basis, as well as half a dozen transfer failures and an off-the-pitch approach to running a club that would leave a team of monkeys red-faced, it did not seem possible to reach a new low in a game against a West Ham team hated by their own and at a point in the season in which there was next to nothing at stake. This season however, our lot have exercised every ounce of creative licence to come up with new and fantastical means of generating car crashes from thin air. Admittedly it might have been a tad more productive for them to expend their energy on something a little more conducive to success, but baby steps, what?

Kaboul

It seemed a tad indulgent of Monsieur Kaboul to finish up his work for the season after half an hour of the penultimate game, the cheeky rascal, but his was a worthy entry nevertheless into the pantheon of Astonishingly Bad Ideas From Our Lot, 2013/14. Here at AANP Towers our hearts have burned with good honest man-love for Monsier Kaboul ever since he puffed out his chest and went bulldozing up the right flank vs Man City a few years back, to create the goal for Crouch that secured our CL status. Thus have excuses been made for him ever since, when he returned to action this season as part of the back-four that was torn to ribbons back at Man City, and apologetic shrugs were offered on his behalf when both feet became completely disengaged from reality and he resorted to a first minute back-heeled o.g. at Anfield.

Alas, the chap’s mishaps have drifted from occasional aberrations to his own unique brand of farce. Presumably these days when he moves from one room to another at Chateau Kaboul he trips over the carpet, careers into the dining table and sends crockery crashing everywhere. With his pace going, and well-timed interventions playing second fiddle to ill-timed lunges, he now seems to offer us precious little beyond a couple of startling eyebrows. ‘Tis with heavy heart that these sentiments are voiced, but his contract is up this summer in any case. Be gone, Kaboul, and take thine eyebrows with thee. In fact, take the entire defence with thee, apart from angry young Kyle Walker. Let’s just start from scratch at the back, because at the moment the whole dashed thing is making my eyes bleed.

Paulinho and Adebayor

However, the bar for scarcely believable lilywhite buffoonery was undoubtedly raised by the intrepid heroes Paulinho and Adebayor, in facing up to a single size 5 football as if it were a vigilante mob armed with numchucks, machetes and those awesome massive gun things that Vasquez wielded in Aliens. With that sort of commitment to the cause one would not fancy their chances in wrestling a ball of string from a heavily sedated kitten, let alone hauling us into the Top Four against the Premiership’s finest. Still, there is some comfort in the thought of the spittle-flecked apoplexy that presumably greeted them when Tim Sherwood sauntered by for the post-mortem.

Almost everywhere one looked on Saturday there was an excruciating limpness about all things lilywhite. Lennon, another whom AANP has resolutely defended year after year, seems to have become a parody of himself, trotting out those jazz-hands and that predictable shoulder-feint-and-dash-out-right routine in an entirely perfunctory manner. Kyle Naughton’s blandness has reached such levels that he is now entirely incapable of stirring any emotion in me whatsoever. Chiriches I imagine is a lad who understands not one word of the instructions he is fed, but nods blankly and then decides to play as the voices in his head dictate.

Excused from the debacle, as ever, were Eriksen and Lloris, but there is no getting away from the fact that this was yet another calamitous chapter in the tome of our 2013/14 season – a tome that will, rather incongruously, nevertheless be titled, “Heavens Above – Look How Many Points We Garnered! Huzzah!”

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Spurs match reports

Spurs 3-1 Fulham: Lennon’s Left Foot & Other Marvels

So with the Top Four a fast-disappearing speck in the distance, the guillotine hovering over Tim and envious glances at Liverpool gently convincing the denizens of AANP Towers that a seventh-placed finish and quiet avoidance of Europa 2014-15 would probably do us the world of good, our heroes have decided to buck up their ideas and consolidate sixth. Thanks, heroes.

The Rarely-Seen Left Foot of Aaron Lennon

Still, Saturday will live long in the memory of all seasoned lilywhites, as for the first time since that winning goal vs Chelski circa ’05, there was a surprise guest appearance from Aaron Lennon’s left foot. Previously only employed for the purpose of enabling his unique strut, there it was in all its glory, sending in absolute peach of a cross for the forehead of young Master Kane. Oh that Lennon had pinged in such left-footed wizardry a little earlier and more regularly in his career, who knows what heights he might have scaled by now? But as it happens that cross on Saturday was a bit of a fluke.

Two More Strings To The Eriksen Bow

As ever, the magic ingredient in Saturday’s glory of glories was young Master Eriksen. Not necessarily in the sense of running rings around the Fulham mob, but the delivery of the free-kicks for Paulinho and Kaboul to do the necessaries was so downright vicious that it had me shielding the eyes of nearby impressionable infants. Even Paulinho, with his obsession for all things sideways and backwards, had little option but to apologetically tap the ball the requisite two forward inches required for doing the goal thing, so undefendable was the whipped cross from Eriksen.

And when Eriksen found himself the unwitting purveyor of a penalty for our visitors, he could be excused, not just for a season’s worth of gold dust in his boots, but because the penalty itself turned into an opportunity to add another million to Lloris’ summer transfer value.

(Insert Gag About the Lexical Flexibility of the Name ‘Kane’)

Three goals in three for young Kane, which must have Senor Soldado keeping his head down and dreaming of sunny Spain. Increasingly bearing the demeanour and gait of a man brought up on a diet solely of raw horsemeat – consumed without the assistance of either a knife or fork – Kane pleasingly demonstrated that his repertoire extends beyond lashing the ball with every ounce of energy from 20-plus yards, which I suppose counts as a step in the direction of becoming a more complete centre-forward. One would hardly suggest that in Kane and Adebayor we have a new Smith and Greaves, but each of them seem eminently capable of working opposing centre-backs into a healthy sweat over the course of 90 minutes.

So as this dismal mish-mash of a season stumbles to its conclusion there are at least a couple of straws clutched within the AANP fist. Lennon’s left foot is unlikely to be seen ever again in public, but where there is Eriksen there is hope, and with a little polish around the edges, and a steady stream of horsemeat, young Kane might prove an asset in next season’s Top Four push. A push that, on current form, is likely to be aided by the marvels of the Europa League, but such is life.

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5 Belated Highlights From The Win vs Dnipro

With apologies for the tardiness, and in no particular order (actually that is an untruth – the highlight was without doubt the mass brawl):

1. The Glory of the On-Pitch Melee

Media sages may drone on that ‘Nobody likes to see that’, but in truth there are fewer more entertaining sights in football than an on-field scrum, and that which ensued on Thursday night delivered hilarity of the highest order. Handbags were swung, fingers were jabbed, naughty words were shrieked, and we were also treated to the quite magnificent sight of the lad who received the red card bursting into tears and going beserk, before being shrouded in an Adebayor strait-jacket. Quite possibly the most fun we have seen at the Lane all season, and all topped off by the glorious Schadenfreude of seeing our visitors’ early time-wasting tactics rather spin round and nip them.

2. Adebayor’s Prowess

It is easy to hammer on about Adebayor, his impact and whatnot, but that second goal in particular was absolutely ripping stuff. For years in this corner of the interweb we have banged on about the need for a Drogba-esque brick outhouse of a forward to lead the line, and while Adebayor’s build is perhaps more stick insect than rabid wildebeest, the strength and technique to pluck the ball from the heavens on his chest, hold off the surrounding scrum and wrong-foot the keeper was scraped from the film that sits atop the cream.

3. Eriksen’s String-Pulling Masterclass

With Dnipro cunningly sitting back in the first half and forcing us to use poor old Daws as a rather unlikely creative fulcrum in the first half, it was a blessed relief that having gone behind our heroes finally bucked up their ideas, with Master Eriksen doing a sterling job of pulling the strings. Drifting infield and treating us to his full array of cute little diagonal passes, the young imp absolutely masterminded that ten-minute blitz, and much that was good either side of it too.

Admittedly this u-turn in attitude, creativity and movement did rather beg the question why they had to go two goals down before rolling up their sleeves, and indeed a more pertinent question of why the absolute dickens Eriksen was deemed surplus to requirements last Sunday as we flopped at Norwich – but Thursday night at least made it pretty clear to whom we should look for inspiration in the coming weeks.

4. Using Numerical Advantage

Many a time and oft has a team of 11 run out of fizz against a well-marshalled 10, but by golly our heroes wasted little time in identifying the pressure point and applying all they had to it until the opposition squealed. With our full-backs hugging the touchline, Eriksen and chums were able to ping the ball wide or cut infield according to the whim of the moment, and Dnipro simply did not have enough bodies in the vicinity to prevent it. A fourth goal might have relieved the pressure, but in the main the job was done well.

5. Poor Old Soldado

Even the most hard-hearted and cynical amongst us would have felt a little sorry for Senor Soldado, who to his credit took his offside goal like a wizened old pro. I hesitate to suggest that the floodgates will open once he scores – a likelier scenario is another 10-game drought, on current form – but the poor lamb is beavering away, bless him.

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Spurs 1-0 Everton: Musings On A Successful Cup Final

A one-nil home win tends to evoke images of rock-solid fortresses and lashings of risk-free discipline, but with the nerves jangling so hard they were almost audible pre kick-off, as the first ten minutes unfolded I began to muse whether this might turn into another one of those wretched thrashings we seem to take every month or so.

Midfield Muscle (Or Lack Thereof)

The midfield troupe in particular seemed to take one look at things and make an instant decision to dig furiously at the ground before burying their heads as far as they would go, with the result that Everton snapped and muscled their way to every loose ball in that opening spell.

The approach was typified by young Master Eriksen. While ‘tis pleasing to note that his transition into a Modric-esque string-puller continues to take effect gradually, through the medium of threading balls sweetly this way and that, when it comes to physical combat he demonstrates all the presence of a particularly malnourished waif, and for some reason the rest of our heroes seemed to take their cue from him. I was also rather underwhelmed by the contribution of Paulinho. That’s a lie of sorts actually, as I struggled to locate Paulinho until he was yanked off in the second half.

Wrongs were eventually righted in this area however. To his credit Dembele didn’t shirk the challenge, and seemed to impose himself more as the game wore on, at one point trundling forward with Everton defenders trying to wrap themselves around his legs and haul him down, in a vaguely Six Nations sort of way.

Adebayor – Like A Girl In A Nursery Rhyme

Ultimately, we find ourselves needing to form an orderly queue to extend our thanks to Adebayor once again. Which is a little galling in a way, because the chap can be – and has been – a rotter of the first order. Like a pigtailed girl in a children’s poem, when bad he is horrid, but when good he is as close as we have come to a centre-forward of the Drogba mould, which is pretty much as the poem dictates, verbatim. His goal yesterday was a case in point, and it is certainly difficult to imagine Messrs Soldado, Kane or Defoe scoring thusly. However, if Sherwood can perform that strange alchemy that keeps him galvanised, and Good Adebayor lollops out each week, then presumably the points will keep ticking over. One dreads to think how events might have panned out, particularly in the first half, had Lukaku been present to lead the line for our visitors.

Man-Love For Walker. No? Just Me Then?

At the risk of attracting silence, some tumbleweed and an evil stare or two, before wrapping up I would like to clear my throat and profess a degree of man-love for the boy Walker. He seems to receive a fairly dubious press amongst the Spurs aficionados of my acquaintance, which seems jolly unfair, because few in the team display anything like his wild-eyed passion. Aside from stomping moodily about the place and calling upon his third lung to go tearing up the right every couple of minutes, I am always rather impressed with his ability to shield the ball out for a goal-kick – admittedly this ranks amongst the lowest victories that can be won during a game, but it still always prompts me into a nod of satisfaction. On top of which he effected a rather nifty piece of work in chipping forward the quick free-kick that set up Adebayor’s goal – remarkably quick thinking for a man who has carved out a side-career in on-field mental negligibility.

Somehow…

Somehow then, the bandwagon rolls on. Somehow, we are still but three points behind the all-singing all-dancing Liverpool team. Honestly, if that lot fail to make the Top Four this year, when their principal competition consists of our ragtag bunch and the worst Man Utd team in decades, then their entire playing and coaching staff deserve to be shot. Pardon the digression. This was by no means vintage lilywhite japery, but given the Cup Final feel to the fixture it was a dashed good effort, and keeps things simmering over nicely.

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Swansea 1-3 Spurs: First XI vs Squad Players

Bless them, Swansea genuinely are a team I would like to play every week. Like some sort of Tottenham Hostpur-lite, they really do not look the sort of troupe who like to get their shirts dirty with any of that tackling nonsense (although Chiriches and his pretty little face might beg to differ), and they would happily spend all day pinging short passes to one another if they could, even if doing so means creating all manner of difficulty for themselves in their own area, just because it all looks so pretty. In the final analysis, it feels a little bit like watching our first eleven playing the squad players.

In the opening half hour it did admittedly seem that our back-four were but one killer pass away from being rather brutally dismembered, but with each passing week it becomes ever more apparent that this is actually just a hilarious optical illusion of the Sherwood Era, and that Chiriches and Dawson actually have everything under control at all times, and are secretly smoking cigars rather than breaking sweat.

A pat on the back too for young Master Walker, who went steaming up the line with such vim and vigour that one imagines he eschewed the bus ride and instead sprinted all the way back to North London. Bentaleb also toddled around with the air of a young man who had arrived at the office with pencils sharpened and a nice clear agenda for the day. It is easy to see why the Brains Trust ’14 like the cut of his jib, for as jibs go his is cut with a pleasing mix of aggression and uncomplicated passing.

However, the shiniest star is saved for young Eriksen, who seemed rather at ease with life in a more central position. Indeed, the forfeiting of Soldado for Chadli had the salubrious side-effect of allowing the midfielders generally to buzz into each other’s territory whenever they spotted something that took their fancy, and this being Swansea it didn’t particularly matter who did what. Chadli himself did not exactly blow up anybody’s skirt, but the principle served well enough, and suggests that when fit again the future could look bright for Lamela.

Dawson Watch

AANP would not be the grumpy soul he is without a whinge or two about glorious captain, and indeed in the first half boxes were duly ticked as he went sliding full pelt in typically whole-hearted and ill-time manner at one point, and then executed that scarcely believable two-handed shove on a chap in the penalty area, a manoeuvre rather generously ignored by the ref. But by golly all was forgiven in the second half, when of all things he rolled a perfectly-weighted diagonal pass inside the full-back and into the path of young Master Walker, leading directly to our second goal. Who would have thought the old man to have so much cunning in him?

Other Highlights

As well as Dawson’s Modric moment, there was also Kyle Walker’s quite glorious dummy in the final moments, that left some poor Swansea bean on his posterior, and the Eriksen cross for the opening goal, that curled so viciously I felt a little dirty just watching it. To their credit, both Dawson and Chiriches did the honourable things in central defence with minimal nonsense, particularly against an opponent such as Bony, who appears to have much of the barnstorm in his constitution.

A cheery day’s work then, and the glint in his eye will tell you that Sherwood has his little mitts set on that Manager of the Month award. The fixtures may have been kind, but the football is fun, the goals are rolling in at a healthy lick and the Top Four remains within spitting distance.

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Swansea – Spurs Preview: The Striking Selection Dilemma… Again

And so the interminable wait continues, amongst just about every Spurs fan of my acquaintance, for the Sherwood bubble to burst, so that those sharpened knives can be plunged with gusto. Nevertheless, it’s four wins and a draw in the league, and another win or draw would seem to be on the agenda today. The approach these days appears to be kill or be killed, so while the defence bears a permanent ‘skin-of-its-teeth’ take on life, up the other end the Eriksen-Adebayor-Soldado-Lennon axis poodles along in pretty fine fettle, and one or two of that mob will presumably be to the fore again today.

Depressingly enough there won’t be too many more opportunities to ponder this in the future, but Sherwood will presumably be scrawling in ‘Credit’ and ‘Debit’ columns respectively the various permutations of replacing Soldado with Defoe. I jolly well know where my own preference lies, but I presume we will again be treated to 70 minutes of Soldado sliding in to knee the ball up into the stands and pick himself up with that rather angry expression on his face as if it’s really all our fault for shouting at the telly-box in the first place.

The rest of the team picks itself these days, and that there is now consistency in team selection makes a welcome change from the slightly more haphazard take on things of the previous regime. The downside seems to be that one cannot stretch a limb these days without crashing into another soul who wants to hitch a lift on the Defoe Express and set off for pastures new. Holtby, Capoue and Chadli have all apparently toyed with the idea in recent days, and Lamela’s name is rarely far from a transfer gossip column. All of which makes me wonder what has happened, six months on, to the summer blueprint of creating a squad for all seasons, which was so enthusiastically endorsed by the suits in the corridors of power.

Meaty stuff I’m sure you agree, but a sizeable digression from the task in hand. I rather like watching Swansea, truth be told, and given their keep-ball style, and our new-fangled approach of back-to-front-as-quickly-as-humanly-possible this ought to make for entertaining viewing. As ever I rather fear for our defence, but all things considered we ought to out-score this lot.

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l’Arse 2-0 Spurs: The Seedier Side of 4-4-2

Plus ça change and all that, what? The 4-4-2 business will win us more games than it loses, particularly given the Sherwood mantra that bonus points will be awarded for whizzing the ball from back to front as rapidly as humanly possible, a most edifying change from the sidewards sidewards catchy monkey snooze-fest under the previous incumbent. However, yesterday – and, one imagines, against most of the slicker teams in the country – we were simply outmanoeuvred in midfield. Like a broken clock shouting ‘Bingo!’ twice a day, Andy Townsend stumbled upon an unfortunate truth yesterday when he mused that l’Arse were taking better care of the ball, and that, coupled with their numerical advantage in midfield, rather did for us.

The Three Stooges

It is never too encouraging to see Curly, Larry and Moe line up across the back-four, and while the defensive line is not quite so high these days, blind panic still broke out with disturbing regularity at the back. Walcott’s pace had poor old Daws and Chiriches scuttling around doing their very best decapitated poultry impressions, and as they spun around in little circles and bumped into each other they could not have been more convincing if adorned with blood-spattered feathers. Were one to use the ‘”Who would buy them?” test of a player’s ability, it is difficult to imagine any top-half team pausing to stroke the chin and count the pennies.

There is at least some consolation in the fact that these are our third and fourth choice centre-backs (one hopes), but the news is worse out on the left. The excruciating little tizz into which young Master Rose imploded can probably be shrugged off as the sort of occasional mistake that befalls even the best of us, but the regularity with which he cedes possession jolly well makes me grind my teeth, and not in the good way mind.

Young Walker tends to attract opprobrium on a regular basis, and admittedly yesterday, having done the hard work of racing back to catch Rosicky, it was a little odd that he opted not to intervene any further in matters to prevent the goal. However, I tend to exonerate the chap on the grounds that few men in Christendom seem to take things quite so seriously and passionately as he. Oh that all our lilywhite heroes cared as much about winning their individual battles throughout the 90.

The Unfortunate Lot of a Midfielder in a 4-4-2

The midfield beavered away, bless them, but that whole thing was rather a mismatch. Adebayor’s commendable exertions in dropping deep were not really enough to fight the fires, and when l’Arse got their groove on and started pinging the ball in neat little triangles one imagines there were a few embarrassed looks amongst Bentaleb and chums. On the bright side, when in possession and merrily bursting out on the counter our heroes look about one smart pass away from a one-on-one every time, with Eriksen and Lennon evidently being given all sorts of encouragement to bust a gut in search of goals. Eriksen in particular looks like he has a nice picture of things in his head. The execution still tends to be a little off-key, but one gets the impression that in time he will be quite the play-maker.

Whether Sherwood sticks with this approach for our trickier away-day assignments will make for interesting viewing in the coming months. The 4-4-2 gamble of losing the possession game but having excess numbers on the counter worked a treat vs Man Utd, but had us panting and wheezing a tad yesterday, and ultimately our glorious leader will probably be judged on results in those biggest of big games.

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Southampton 2-3 Spurs: Sherwood Goes Down The AANP Route

Now that’s the spirit. Having attracted the opprobrium of AANP pre kick-off for the unpardonable crime of simply being Tim Sherwood, the young bean has earned himself a commemorative bust on the mantelpiece (in truth it will more likely be a sketch of a stick-man left on the window-sill – but the sentiment remains pure) for scrawling the most hilariously gung-ho teamsheet since Ardiles got a little carried away.

It certainly does not merit him the gig full-time, and better teams will absolutely tear us limb from limb if we continue down this route, but in ludicrously entertaining contrast to weeks gone by this was marvellous fun to behold, not least because a plethora of bona fide goalscoring opportunities were created, as our heroes tripped over themselves to get in on the penalty area fun.

There were various pleasing aspects to Sherwood’s reckless decision to gambol down the all action no plot route, including the rapidity with which the ball progressed from point A to point B, facilitated by some pretty nifty one-touch stuff. Eriksen can revel in the glory of a gold star for his part in this, although it comes with the proviso that he can do yet more to dictate things, and I was also pleasantly surprised by Chadli’s contribution when he toddled on.

As well as the most welcome instruction to attack whenever in possession, the game-plan also seemed to involve hunting in packs high up the pitch when not in possession, which had its perks no doubt, but also brought about some disconcerting wobbles when Southampton counter-attacked and, our midfield looked on from about 20 yards behind the play. Still, such are the Ts and Cs of living by the sword, and as if to emphasise the point our glorious leader sneered at the very concept of trying to protect the lead by trading Soldado for Defoe with five minutes remaining. Marvellous stuff.

Other points of note

Goodness knows how Monsieur Lloris felt when he saw the teamsheet proclaiming that the entire defensive responsibility of the afternoon pretty much hinged upon Dawson and Chiriches, but Daws, to his credit, kept it simple this week,  generally deploying the no-nonsense approach. Chiriches increasingly comes across as a gullible sort of imp, regularly selling himself by flying hook, line and sinker in one direction at the faintest dip of a shoulder from an opposition forward, but this can probably be expected of one’s fourth choice centre-back. The new chappie Bentaleb seemed suspiciously confident about life, and the joys of two up-front were once again displayed for all to see, but the highlight of the afternoon may well have been the look of something between bewilderment and disdain etched across the face of the ref as Adebayor jigged away his little celebration. While I would not trust Sherwood to run the rule every week, it was absolutely rip-roaring fun.

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Spurs – Liverpool Preview: Striking Dilemma Ahoy

They may only have been the dregs of the English and Russian leagues respectively, but three consecutive wins have done enough to secure nods of mild satisfaction where once there were howls of anguish, so we can go into this one with sentiments bordering on cautious optimism. Moreover, the gods of fate seem to have nonchalantly tossed us a couple of extra scraps, and thus we find that the red mob will toddle up to the front gates sans Messrs Gerrard and Sturridge. Admittedly seeing Dawson go toe-to-toe with Suarez will be a little like having a member of the undead spend 90 minutes pulling a single entrail from our gut, but beyond that particular mismatch we ought to have a decent chance.

AVB would presumably not have dreamed of this a couple of weeks ago, but he actually has a few positive selection dilemmas to chew over today. To claim that we have an embarrassment of riches in attack is perhaps stretching the point, but after Defoe applied himself with some rigour and effect vs Sunderland and Fulham, we then had Soldado stumbling upon the secret formula for alchemy in midweek, albeit against fairly dreadful opposition. There are some who would still love to see the two of them pitted alongside each other and told to go out there and make merry, but presumably it will be one or t’other this afternoon.

In defence there seems to be a fairly definite hierarchy, so selection will simply depend upon who is fit, but the five across the midfield/attack again pose a few positive problems. AVB seems in recent weeks to have settled upon a selection strategy that involves writing names on paper, throwing them in the air and picking the ones that land nearest to him, but Messrs Lennon, Townsend and Holtby have all done the footballing equivalent of jumping up and down in front of him yelling “Pick me! Pick me!” while Sigurdsson seems a reliable sort of egg, and Lamela’s pass for the second goal on Thursday was drop-dead gorgeous. Nice to see the lad Eriksen back on his feet as well, and ahead of all of these in the queue is Master Paulinho, who has been the furthest man forward in recent weeks.

In the grand scheme of things three points would naturally help chivvy us along to where we want to be, but to take them at the expense of one our rivals – and particularly one boasting quite such smug office colleagues as this lot – would be a most desirable conclusion of affairs.