Wednesday 12 March 2008

Sven on mcfctv.com, Spurs team.

New Sven interview just on mcfctv.com (well worth £3.99/month if you're not already paying).

Ball is almost certainly out, Dunne is 50/50 and Onuoha should be fit - he starts training on Thursday. He suggests that without Dunne, it would be Corluka and Onuoha at centre half - presumably with Garrido and Sun either side. With Dunne, we don't have to play Jihai at full back, and can put out a very respectable Garrido-Dunne-Onuoha-Corluka.

The crisis comes if Dunne doesn't make it and Onuoha breaks down on Thursday/Friday. In that case, we'd be left with Garrido, Corluka and Sun. I don't know who would be the worse centre half out of Javi and Jihai - but either of them against Keane or Berbatov would be difficult. Who we'd draft in as a replacement full back (Gelson? Elano? Mee? Trippier?) is also not immediately clear. So let's hope Dunne and Nedum both make it and hopefully we'll get something.

The interviewer pressed Sven on potentially changing up tactics for the last ten games. He was characteristically reticent - suggesting that our play has not been too bad recently, and so "I am a little bit afraid to make a revolution". The issue of changing the players or the system can often be a bit chicken/egg I think. We've come this far playing variations on 4-5-1 (the best we've played this season was 4-2-3-1 in the Autumn- when Elano was getting genuine support from Petrov and Ireland) so I can't see that changing now. Moreover, we barely have one fit and firing centre forward, never mind two.

I've written more than I planned to here - hopefully there will still be enough uncovered material for me to do something about our team for Sunday later in the week.

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