It’s Blackburn Rovers for Spurs on Saturday afternoon as we attempt to get some momentum going following the welcome and entertaining win against Man City on Wednesday. A trip to Ewood Park is rarely straightforward and playing a Sam Allardyce team is never much fun. If they come out with their normal familiar direct style then Michael Dawson will need to continue his current run of good form and Sebastien Bassong will have to put the problems he’s had against the more muscular style of forward (Carlton Cole for example) behind him.
Last season we played some of our best football of the season away from home in the corresponding fixture and were absolutely cruising the game with ten minutes left when Wilson Palacios got wrongly sent off after a David Dunn piece of theatrics. We lost 2-1. Philip Walton was the ref then as he is on Saturday. Palacios’s booking this week means that he is one of three midfielders on four bookings, Jenas and Huddlestone being the other two. A yellow for any of these three might be the way that Modric gets back into the team such is the form of Niko Kranjcar on the left. It was nice to see the two goal hero so humble in his post match interviews on Wednesday.
We haven’t won at Blackburn since October 2002 when Jamie Redknapp’s flukey late lob gave us a 2-1 win. Robbie Keane scored his first goal for us in that game but at the moment how many more he’ll score is up in the air. Our best performances of late have been with Crouch and Defoe up front and Harry should be reluctant to start with anyone else. There are a number of games coming up in a short space of time and both Keane and Pavlyuchenko will probably get festive run outs even if it’s just against Peterborough.
Blackburn lie twelth in the table. David Dunn has been having a good season but is an injury doubt. Emerton is also out. Neither side has any players suspended. Benoit Assou-Ekotto limped off towards the end of the Man City game meaning that Gareth Bale may get an outing on the left hand side of the defence. BAE and Tom Huddlestone are our only ever presents this season.
This game is the first of two tricky away fixtures. A defeat would deflate the newly plumped up tilt at the top four pillow. A draw at least is a must; an early goal would probably get us a win and bring everyone home from the grim and frozen north happy.
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By MF
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