Pre-season friendlies are generally ignored by football fans. It’s nice if you win, but if you don’t, then who cares? It’s just about building up fitness before the start of another gruelling season. But for Spurs, this pre-season has a whole new importance. A new manager, AVB, bringing in a new formation, a new system, and hopefully some new players. This means that these friendlies allow the team to play to the new system, learn about it, and identify who fits and who doesn’t fit into the formation. And Valencia, a similar-placed club but in the Spanish league, are an ideal team to play to finesse the formation.
Will Spurs play a 4-6-0 in the first half, just as we did in the US on occasion, or we will put our faith in Kane and JD to fire us to victory? This is AVB’s last chance to suss out the talent and plug out the deadwood from our squad, so we can expect wholesale changes at half time.
Don’t worry too much about the result, as players that are likely to be straight out the door will most probably figure – this match is certainly more about confirming the system and fixing the flaws. As such, we will probably start with our strongest team, and then make changes as necessary throughout the match to accommodate fatigue and to prevent injury. So don’t be surprised if we score first but then concede in the second half.
Valencia are a strong side and there will no doubt be a good atmosphere at the Mestalla, however, they are expected to miss one of their best players in the form of striker Roberto Soldado. Although I believe the result to not be important, I will still give you a prediction: 1 – 1. What do the fans think? How important do you think this pre-season friendly is to us and AVB?
By Alex Beck
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