Real Football Man All of the Football, All of the time
Another London derby this evening pits South against North as Crystal Palace play host to Tottenham at Selhurst Park. Sam Allardyce’s men have already claimed the recent scalp of Arsenal in front of their own fans and will be looking to do the same against their title chasing opposition.
It pretty much is win or bust for Tottenham this evening after Chelsea’s 4-2 win over Southampton last night, that has opened the gap to seven points once again as Antonio Conte’s men have put the ball very much in Tottenham’s court.
Not only that but there is the small matter of that F.A. Cup defeat on Saturday for Tottenham to deal with. We all know last season that Mauricio Pochettino’s men went into something of a tailspin after missing out on the league title at Stamford Bridge due to the 2-2 draw with their arch rivals.
So the job for Pochettino is to pick his squad up and make sure they give nothing away this evening as anything less than maximum points and you get the feeling that the title will definitely be ending up in West London with blue ribbons attached to it.
The task of getting maximum points at Selhurst Park is not going to be easy, there’s the aforementioned demolition of Arsenal but we must not forget away wins at both Chelsea and Liverpool as of late. It was their win over the league leaders which just gave us something resembling a title race.
That threw a spanner in the works for Chelsea and you get the feeling that Allardyce would love to do the same for Tottenham’s title ambitions also. His players will certainly have their tails up after their impressive win at Anfield on Sunday.
Christian Benteke was the man of the hour as the brace of goals against his former club meant that Palace have now hit the heady heights of 12th in the table. Not only that but on 38 points the objective for Palace which was beating the drop has nearly been achieved.
They are nearly over the line but not quite, therefore the job for Allardyce is to make sure he gets his players fired up again and not allowing them to rest on their laurels. With the position that they are in they can start to look up instead of over their shoulders.
As crazy as it may sound but there is no reason why they cannot aim for a top 10 finish, they are only two points behind Watford who currently lie 10th but they are in much better form. If the two clubs carry on their current trajectories then they could very well be swapping places soon.
That would have been something Palace fans could only have dreamed of a couple of months ago but credit to Allardyce as once again he has pulled off the great escape. It seems that his methods take a while to kick in but when they do the results are obvious to see.
And it’s results which are the bread and butter of the Premier League. A big part of the turnaround has been the loan signing of Mamadou Sahko, he did not feature of Sunday due to the terms of the loan deal but he is available to feature this evening.
As for Tottenham they have no new injury news or returnees therefore it is the same personnel that is available from Saturday. The question will be what formation they are set out to start the game in, one thing we do know though is that Hueng-min Son is very unlikely to feature at Left Wing Back.
It was a gamble that backfired for Pochettino as he tried to shoehorn a player into the team, it was obvious that he wanted to reward Son for his string of great performances as of late but unfortunately that was not the time or the position in which to give him a run out.
A lesson learned for both manager and players and they will look to assert their dominance on London opposition once again but this time with a differing outcome. Questions will still be asked as to how they were on top for so long but still ended up losing 4-2 to Chelsea.
But at the same time it is certainly something they cannot dwell out and they will have to bounce back straight away and the only way to do so is by picking up all three points. Can Tottenham prove they have the mentality to stay in the title race.
This is a big week for Spurs, they’ve been knocked out of the cup and they could be out of the running for the league by the end of the night. That’s not forgetting the North London Derby on Sunday, there’s also the nightmare scenario where they could go into that game 10 points behind Chelsea.
If that is the case then you get the feeling that no matter what Tottenham do against Arsenal it will be pretty much an irrelevance, that will only be the case if they lose at Selhurst Park. It’s a defining week for the club, just how big a result will this turn out to be?
