Arse Spuds

QPR. Already relegated. Players laughing down the tunnel, all the way to the bank. A club in total disarray, full of mercenaries with no regard for the club or any one of it's supporters. Nothing to play for. Easy. Wait... This is Arsenal we're talking about, of course it wasn't bloody easy.

Kick off. a long punt forward to Walcott. Ball finds it's way to Rosicky. He crosses to the edge of the box, finding Podolski, who heads down to Arteta. Cheeky through ball finds Walcott, who stabs it in. 22 Seconds. This will be easy! After a couple of long range wild shots from them, Walcott gets another half decent chance on 25 minutes and Green tips onto the post. Should have been 2, good save, good start. I relaxed, it's already in the bag. 3 or 4, i thought, with a smugness.

Skip forward to about 70 minutes. WE HADN'T HAD A SHOT SINCE. Why? Why does this always happen? A game where we're clear favourites, usually when we're in good form and we just don't play. Thoughts of Norwich pop into mind. Or Schalke maybe. Everyone knows we're going to concede.. it's just a matter of time. As it ticks over to 70 mins Walcott gets another decent shot away after taking the ball out the sky with a great touch.

12 minutes pass, not much happens. Then they get the chance. Remy with a curler from the edge of the box. Szczesny pulls off a good save. PHEW. That was the one, and they haven't scored it. Game ends. THANK GOD. The victory doesn't mean much as Spurs pulled another lucky win. I try not to think about their results too much and just keep thinking as long as we win our final two , it'll all be fine.

Sunday comes, and Chelsea score a late winner against a weakened United side. Typical. We now really need the Chelsea-Spurs game to be a draw, because if Spurs win, we're in an incredibly different position. We have Wigan 3 days after their cup final, so we should beat them. Should. Then Newcastle on the final day. If they're still sitting where they are now (17th) I'm seriously concerned. Can our incredibly inconsistent players overcome a team that needs to win to stay up? I'm not so sure. Let's pray Newcastle win Their next game and aren't in such a difficult position when we meet. That said Spurs play Stoke and Sunderland, in similar positions. I'ts gonna be a great end to the season.

Matt

Tottenham entertain Southampton at the lane on Saturday in what cannot be described as anything but a must win game. Spurs currently sit in fifth but are 2 points behind the Arse but have a game in hand over their North London rivals and three behind the chavs who they still have to face at Stamford Bridge.

  It should be an interesting encounter and I personally will be expecting a silent celebration from bale if he scores against his former club (highly likely). Bale will be entering this game full on confidence after winning every award ever invented in the space of a week. Therefore I am expecting a brilliant game from our spearhead and hopefully the lads will feed of his positivity and give us a brilliant result!

Southampton are almost assured of their top flight status for another season. the players are already showing signs of dreaming of a summer spent on sun beaches after their lacklustre performance against West Brom last weekend in their 3-0 defeat.

Team News.

Tottenham are sweating on the fitness of all important midfielder Mousa Dembele after the Belgium was forced off clutching his hamstring against Wigan at the weekend. His fitness will be assessed ahead of the game so expect to see him on the bench if at all.

Huddlestone will be a likely replacement and expect to see us back to the 442 formation since I dont see the midfield trio working without the moose.

Southampton will be without the suspended Gaston Ramirez and Danny Fox after they were both dismissed last weekend. However Luke Shaw looks likely to play after recovering from an ankle injury

Predicted line ups:

Spurs:


Southampton:



Predicted score

Tottenham have a brilliant home record against Southampton, winning 9 and loosing 2 in there last 11 meetings. Therefore I see a comfortable win and since I will be singing my heart out tomorrow the stands I am going to be the optimist and go for a 4-0 win the Spurs! COYS!

Adam.

So I am sat here at time of writing watching the Madrid game. And I think to myself, we actually have no Spanish players. Excusing Iago Falque who is on loan in Narnia so I wont count him.

Spain is arguably the best footballing nation in the world with hundreds of class players. Lets just take a look at the premier league. At Chelski, Mata is continuously tearing defences apart with his technical flamanjing (who AVB spotted and bought). Oh and of course you cant forget the talent of Fernando TORRES! wait... what?

The dirty reds up the road posses a player under the name of Cazorla who never fails to impress. Same with David Silva at Man Money (although he hasn't had a good season). Michu at Swansea. I think you get the idea.

Anyway... now to the question this post is about. Do we need more Spanish meat at Spurs?! In my opinion, no. They smell, their jibber-jabber annoys me, and we have a Welsh wizard, unlike most teams.

Adam

There was a big media hype over this "guard of honour" tradition we have. Having to give one to van Persie on his return to The Emirates and what not. It was of course a non event, and was over practically as soon as it had begun.

Onto the match, and we looked bright straight from kick off. Pressing leads to van Persie misplacing a pass, the ball finds it's way to Rosicky who plays a lovely ball in behind for a certain Theo Walcott to nip in behind and score. two minutes in, 1-0 up. Great start. Was it offside? It looked it, but half of Theo's body was still behind Evra and it was very tight. Sometimes you get them sometimes you don't. 20 minutes in and we're showing the same intensity, hassling them, winning the ball back, trying to get in behind. Cazorla and Jones have both gone close. As the half goes on Man United's frustration is evident, with four bookings before the half hour mark.

 38 minutes. A cross in by Nani, met by who else but van Persie 2 yards out. Szczesny makes himself as big as possible and takes it right in the face, top save. 42 mins, Sagna turns, and plays a weak pass straight to van Persie. He sprints into the box. Sagna's right behind him. Oh god no... everyone sees it coming, Sagna cleans van Persie out, clear penalty. (why was he protesting!?) 1-1. Sloppy, sloppy goal. Half time.

The second half is much more even, after our domination in the first, though it never quite reaches the same level of intensity. Chances at both ends, but nothing major. Wilshere, Chamberlain and Gervinho come on but none make a major impact. Koscielny comes close late on, after having a good game. Giggs has a good chance even later,but it's well blocked by Mertesacker. Both teams push for a winner, but the game ends even. (and my prediction is correct, thank you very much) Arguably a fair result, i was very happy with our performance and honestly thought we deserved to win.

Where does this leaves us? Well with Chelsea and Spurs still to play each other, assuming we win our final 3 games - QPR on Saturday should be a simple demolition job (but inevitably won't be) - we should finish top 4. Whether that's 3rd or 4th will depend on our neighbours results. 73 points is 3 more than last season, so i'm still confident.

Matt

Manchester United visit The Emirates today in what would traditionally be a clash of the titans. Only today is very different. Not only have United already won the league convincingly, but it's been a good few years since we've given them a good game.

Think back to January 2012, 2-1. A pretty close game, inevitable defeat, but regardless of the result nothing we could have done would help us forget the woeful 8-2. Moving forward. November. 2-1. Close again? No. it wasn't close, and it should have been 4 or 5 to them, with Santi hitting a consolation as the last kick of the game. Ferguson complained his team didn't score enough. He looks at this fixture as a way to boost goal difference, on the contrary about 10 year ago, he would be shitting himself. Of course the Arsenal "fall from grace" is well documented, so lets move back to today.

With United having already won the title, i'm hoping they won't play a full strength side. Of course HE will play, but Ferguson now has a chance to rotate and give his younger players some first team action (unless he wants the points record, which i don't think he cares about). They played on Monday, so lets assume they "partied" into Tuesday and aren't as well rested. It only takes one or two players to not be up for it to change a game, and considering  the Sp*rs result yesterday, i can't see that being a problem on our side. A different story for them perhaps...

When looking at our run in, i thought this to be a game we would mark as a defeat and move on. I try to be realistic and not hopeful. As the game drew closer, it started to look pretty certain they'd actually win the title at our ground. They didn't however, partly thanks to the Spuds. I'd rather give them (and HIM) a guard of honor then them actually win it here and run around celebrating at our place.

I've built up a quiet confidence here, and if we can really have a go at them i don't see why, now, we can't actually win this one. They'll let us have the ball, they always do. Hopefully they'll field a slightly weakened side, but that's not a certainty. With Giroud out i'm praying Arsene keeps the same formation and just swaps Podolski into his place, but it wouldn't surprise me if he played Gervinho there instead. I'd love the Ox to start, but he'll probably be resigned to the bench once again. Presumably Theo will start, and he really needs to put a shift in. He's scored once since signing his contract and He's been anonymous in most of the games since Christmas.

Taking all of this into account, and if we play our game properly, I'm confident we can avoid defeat, and maybe even win. But like i said i try to be realistic, and so...

1-1

Matt

Well that was bloody scrappy. 2-2 at wigan, not exactly a top 4 result, but hey, its spurs we are talking about, what did you expect? I try to think of an individual that really stood out for me, but it is hard. Dembele was looking good until he picked up that knock early on. Huddlestone was consistent but not consistently brilliant, good passing overall but nothing that really impressed me. Walker started of brilliantly but then faded in the second half. And Bale, very well played in the first goal, a very strangle goal but never the less important, but other than that I was disappointed, he hung to deep and didn't get involved as much as we have come to expect. Maybe he is still playing with a slight injury, he did say he was playing through the pain barrier last week at Manchester City. 

We had a few good chances in the first half that we should have put away which I am sure would have put Wigan to bed. What is it with wigan? I cant get my head around it. I was at the home game earlier in the season playing them and we had no tempo, no pace, no desire and ended up loosing 0-1. And then it was repeated again, we couldn't put the game to bed in the first half and as soon as Wigan upped there game in the second half we didn't know what to do. We can completely outplay Man City, on paper arguably the best team in England costing millions of ponds but against Wigan, a very small club struggling to compete in the premier league we seem short of ideas? And this is with Holtby, Huddlestone, Bale, Lennon, all outstandingly creative players on the pitch. Then we have clinical finishers in Bale and Defoe and Dempsey's knack of scoring goals that we don't see coming, and we are still short of ideas.

However, there is no need to worry. I think that our champions league place is still in our hands, If Arsenal loose tomorrow which I expect they will we can finish above them by winning our remaining games, which wont be easy but it is doable. I think the footballing gods really want the Chelski game to be as crucial as possible for us which It looks set to be now. 

Maybe AVB has finally realised that Adebayor is a waist of space, he started defoe instead at the weekend and Ade wasn't even benched. And i have heard no word of injury, maybe this is a sign that Adebayor has played his last game for us? We will all find out soon enough...

Spurs take a trip to the DW Stadium today to face relegation battling Wigan in what should be a tense encounter. The result is crucial for both clubs: Wigan in their fight for survival and Spurs in their battle with the other London clubs for a top four place and the riches of champions league football. Wigan come into this game after a 2-0 defeat at West Ham United which now sees the Lactics sitting in the final relegation spot in 18th place. Martinez has developed a reputation in recent campaigns for outstanding end-of-season results and surviving relegation by narrow margins. So this game against Spurs seems as good a time as any to hit that late run of form again. The main problem I see with Wigan's home record is the the amount of goals that they have conceded at home, 32 that is, which is the most in the league. And they are playing against a Spurs side deadly on the counter attack who scored the second amount of away goals in the league (31) second only to Manchester United (35).