Why Brighton Is The Perfect Time To Experiment

Embed from Getty Images
As you may have noticed over the past few weeks, is hasn’t been going too well for Maurcio Pochettino in the Tottenham hot seat. It has been our worst start to the Premier League season since 2008/09 when Juande Ramos was at the helm (it seems a very long time ago doesn’t it).

Last week, we saw Spurs cruise to a 5-1 win over Asteras Tripolis in the Europa League. That was a game where we saw both Emmanuel Adebayor and Harry Kane start in. However, we didn’t lineup as you might think we would. Pochettino deployed his players in his usual 4-2-3-1 formation, with Kane playing in the number ten position.

Now, some will say that you can get the best out of Harry Kane when you play him just behind the striker. You would certainly be lead to believe this, after the youngster bagged a hat-trick at White Hart Lane last Thursday.

As I said earlier, last week we tried Harry Kane and Emmanuel Adebayor out together, and that seemed to work quite well. As you will agree, the Premier League is no place to experiment. I feel that we are active in so many competitions, which means that we have plenty of games to try things out, and especially in these earlier rounds when we face possibly lesser opponents that we necessarily would face in the later rounds of the competition. This is possibly why Mauricio Pochettino mixed it up a bit in starting Kane and Adebayor.

Embed from Getty Images

I feel that this Capital One Cup game against Brighton is the perfect opportunity to start Roberto Soldado and Harry Kane together up front. We saw this partnership briefly on Sunday for seven minutes, and you would have to say, it worked well. The two linking up well to carve out our best chance of the second half. We would ideally like to see more of the same if they both start on Wednesday.

This isn’t just a night for Soldado and Kane. This is also a night for variation all over the pitch. Possibly swapping around the attacking three, and starting with Andros Townsend on the left and Aaron Lennon on the right. Another thing to bear in mind is that the starting XI isn’t permanent for the full ninety minutes. It is very easy for Pochettino to swap things around again at half time if the changes are not going according to plan.

So, when I look at the team sheets at around an hour before the game, I would like to see variation in the team selection, and then we may be able to tackle some of our Premier League issues.