This Saturday afternoon, Tottenham returns to White Hart Lane for the first time in the new campaign, and when we play Stoke today, we only want one thing. A win.
Cast your minds back to last season when Spurs played Stoke at home, and you will remember that we weren’t great. We were worse than that, and it was the typical Spurs performance. We were sloppy in every department, and Stoke took advantage of this. Fast forward to now, and we have improved and jumped leaps and bounds to avoid being that team again.
Since then, Mauricio Pochettino has implemented his style (or at least tried to) and in some games it seems to have work. The only thing that has been missing is that without Harry Kane, we probably wouldn’t have got as many points as we did. Sure, Eriksen and Chadli both got into double figures, but the lack of a second striker hurt us last season. A striker and defensive midfielder is needed, but I’d actually give Dele Alli a game today. No Spurs fan would be against seeing Charlie Adam being nutmegged.
As I write this, Clinton N’jie has officially been confirmed as a Tottenham player on his birthday (Happy birthday by the way), and this could be a good sign for fans, and it shows that the club is prepared to spend. N’jie has bundles of pace and is very similar to someone like Jay Rodriguez, and N’jie will most likely play on the wing once his work permit is completed.
After the opening games last week, we learnt a fair bit about the two sides, and judging by the two games, Spurs looked better than Stoke. It helped that Stoke were awful against Liverpool, but Spurs didn’t play as badly against Man. United. There were signs that things weren’t bad, and Toby Alderweireld played extremely well, and he looks the real deal next to Jan Vertonghen, but today could be a game where a few new boys, in particularly Alex Pritchard and Dele Alli, get a run around.
Make no mistake, Stoke are a good team, but the thing is, as is the same with many of Mark Hughes’ teams, and that is he can stabilize a club, but once he needs to push further something seems to stop him. Could this be different for Stoke? Probably not, so let’s just hope Tottenham make us happy today and pick up the 3 points this afternoon. If you’re wondering, the Tom Scholes prediction of the day is Tottenham 2-1 Stoke.
