BBC Sport pundit, Chris Sutton, has predicted that Tottenham will lose Cristian Stellini’s first match in charge as interim head coach this evening against Everton.
It seems an eternity ago that Spurs threw away a two-goal lead with 15 minutes to go against bottom-of-the-league Southampton, which prompted Antonio Conte’s press conference downfall.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and Conte is gone, Fabio Paratici has stepped down for the moment, and Harry Kane has become England’s all-time top goalscorer.
However, Sutton believes it will be business as usual for the Lilywhites in their next Premier League away match, as he predicts a 2-1 scoreline in favour of the Toffees.
We are coming to the crunch point in the season where not only are the likes of Spurs fighting for Europe near the top of the table, but the likes of Everton are fighting tooth and nail to avoid relegation.
Chris Sutton said (BBC): ‘I ended up changing my mind three times about which way this one would go. It really is impossible to call.
‘With Tottenham, this is where we find out whether they are better off without Antonio Conte, who had to go after his rant about his players and the club following their draw with Southampton.
‘Spurs can’t really expect a new manager bounce under acting head coach Cristian Stellini, who was Conte’s number two, and I don’t think we will see them doing too much very differently.
‘Their inconsistency makes them so difficult to predict. Just looking at their attack, Son Heung-min has been poor all season, to the extent he apologised this week for letting Conte down.
‘But then they’ve got Harry Kane, who can score from anywhere and could easily wallop a couple more in on Monday.
‘This is huge for Spurs in terms of making the top four but Everton need the victory even more because they have one of the toughest run-ins of any of the teams down at the bottom.’
Spurs Web Opinion:
I would hope that Stellini will do nothing more than take the shackles off Spurs in his first game. Tell the players to go out there and enjoy it without being so rigid. Playing defensively is all well and good, but not when you leak goals regardless. Let’s go out and put on a show, please.