The stakes could hardly be higher at Loftus Road this Saturday evening as QPR’s fight to stay in the league meets Tottenham’s struggle to hold their season together as it threatens to come apart at the seams.

Overview

It’s probably an exaggeration to say that this season is ‘now or never’ for Spurs in their quest to become Champions League regulars, but I don’t think it’s unfair to assume that it’s ‘now or not for quite some time to come’.

Tottenham’s attempts to build a team to compete at the upper end of the Premiership were hampered until recently by their best players leaving. Just when they started to look genuinely competitive some slimy agent would get the nod from everybody’s favourite ruddy nosed Scot in Manchester and Michael Carrick and Dimitar Berbatov would be off up the M6 to the Coliseum of Commercialism.

Last summer was the first time I can remember for a while where Tottenham actually put their foot down and said no. Ordinarily Luka Modric would have moved across London for big money and underachievement at Chelsea when the West London side made their interest clear almost a year ago but this time Spurs made the player stay, which must have taken strong will and powers of persuasion given their failure to qualify for the Champions League.

Initially that seemed to have backfired. Manager Harry Redknapp gave the impression he was rather counting on having the money from Modric to bring in four or five other players, including Bolton’s Gary Cahill, and the lack of that cash meant for once the summer transfer window closed with Redknapp apparently on the losing side of a game he usually plays so well. But after a nightmare start where the two Manchester clubs ran in eight goals against Spurs in the first two matches of the season they quickly strung impressive performances and form together and went into Christmas with a genuine chance of not only making the top four, but actually winning the thing outright.

Now there are two rather large elephants about to enter the room at this point, and I’m going to leave them to stand there until further down the page. The first is the sudden departure of Fabio Capello as England manager and the almost universal acceptance that Redknapp will be the man to replace him, the second is whether Redknapp is actually all he’s cracked up to be when you consider the team’s form since he changed the system that was working so well for him in the first half of the season.

From a position where they led 2-0 against Arsenal in the North London derby and were looking good to finish second or third Spurs contrived a 5-2 defeat at the Emirates and are now limply resisting advances from Newcastle and Chelsea for the fourth spot in the league. That said, don’t write Tottenham off just yet. Their bad run has coincided not only with the latter stages of the FA Cup but also a run of league games against Arsenal, Everton, Chelsea and Man Utd. They conclude the campaign not only with this match against QPR but other games against Aston Villa, Bolton, Blackburn and Fulham which probably would have been the five games they’d have picked in these circumstances given the choice.

If they claim fourth expect some of Europe’s leading talent to beat a path to the doors at White Hart Lane this summer – Lille’s much sought after midfielder Eden Hazard spoke openly about his admiration for the club when things were going well, but has been linked with Chelsea and Arsenal since they went pear shaped. The quality of manager they could attract here to replace Redknapp will also increase exponentially with Champions League qualification.

Miss out for a second consecutive season and not only will the quality of incoming players and manager not be as high, but they’ll also struggle to hang onto their best talent for a second straight summer. Gareth Bale and Luka Modric are likely departures; Emmanuel Adebayor is only on loan and commands a big wage. All three could be in different colours next season which would leave Levy and Spurs back in the position they were when Redknapp arrived, staring down the barrel of three year plan once again.

Not quite do or die, but certainly do or be prepared for another long game.

Interview

For the second time this season we turn to journalist Michael Pickard for a few inside tips on what’s going on at Spurs at the moment. Now as if the punishment of sitting across the desk from yours truly five days a week wasn’t enough, Michael has also been training bloody hard for the London Marathon on Sunday. It’s for the Alzheimer’s Society which is a terrific cause and if you want to sponsor him you can do so by clicking here.

What’s gone wrong?

Since our 5-0 demolition of Newcastle in February, it would seem that not much has gone right. Though there are plenty of little issues that seem to have affected the side, our performances haven't been that bad.

Our biggest problem seems to be scoring goals as we are able to create plenty of chances. Jermain Defoe can't seem to buy a start while Harry doesn't like a traditional 4-4-2 and prefers Adebayor up front with Rafael Van Der Vaart (usually) playing in support.

Aside from the continued speculation that Harry Redknapp is the next England manager-in-waiting, our lack of a consistent centre back pairing has also led to holes creeping into the back four. On his day Ledley King is still one of the best defenders in the country but the effect of his injuries is becoming increasingly apparent. William Gallas has had his own injury problems, while we have missed Michael Dawson.

Scott Parker has been a rock all season and is a cert to be named the club's player of the year, though he must be knackered. Aaron Lennon has also been injured and this has led to Harry shuffling the midfield, bringing Gareth Bale over to the right and sticking Luka Modric on the left, where he is ineffective and wasted. Bale has also started to drift in from the flanks, something which seemed to work for a couple of games but I would prefer to keep him out wide where he can do the most damage.

However, let's not forget that this dismal run has coincided with away matches against Arsenal, Everton and Chelsea, and the home match with Manchester United. We now have five games to put some goals away and cement our place in the Champions' League next season.

What impact has the Harry Redknapp to England talk had on things? Do you think he’ll go? Is he the best man for the job?

Though the initial storm has died down, it remains a case of when, not if, Redknapp will surely become England manager. Were he not interested, you would have hoped he would have committed his future to the club by now. There is also the problem of the lack of credible alternatives. As is well known, his best qualities are his man management and his straight talking, which is what is needed with a squad of players that has won countless trophies at club level but failed to develop on the international stage. He is also popular with the press, something that might help him when results start to slide.

Who do you want to see replace him if he does go?

Aside from importing an unknown foreign manager, the choices appear to be slim. This might be David Moyes' chance to move on from Everton and it would be good to see what he can do with a bit more money than he has been used to. Brendan Rogers has signed a new contract recently at Swansea, but that might just be a way to secure maximum compensation if a bigger club comes calling. Roberto Martinez would also be worth a look, but his years at struggling Wigan might not place him as highly as other candidates. Andre Villas Boas is out of a job but his appointment might be less likely. Jose Mourinho could be the wild card but would he join Spurs over waiting for the Man United job to become vacant? I hope Daniel Levy has someone in mind.

Will Spurs still make the Champions League? Will the likes of Modric and Bale leave if they don’t?

Ahead of Newcastle on goal difference and with Chelsea two points behind, in no uncertain terms we have to win our last five games. The performances have been there, now we have to make sure we get the results they have deserved and hope the chasers can drop a point or two to make things more comfortable on the last day of the season. Home fixtures against Blackburn and Fulham should be a guaranteed six points, which means our away days, starting at Loftus Road and with visits to The Reebok Stadium and Villa Park, will hold the key to our European fixtures next season. While all are winnable, Bolton has never been particularly favourable to us and it depends which Villa side turn up. A win on Saturday would fill us with confidence for the run-in.

If we don't make it, coupled with the prospect of Harry leaving as well, there could be a lot of people missing from White Hart Lane next season. Modric and Bale will surely attract some bids, testing Levy's resolve once again, while Adebayor looks likely to leave as well unless his wage demands are reduced. Van Der Vaart might also receive some attention. Should Harry leave, Levy must make sure he appoints a replacement who has the stature to keep our best players or the club's Champions League hopes for next season could be under threat without a ball being kicked.

Who leads the way in the player of the year poll?

It's got to be Parker, hasn't it? Bargain buy of last summer, he came effortlessly fitted into the team alongside Modric and was at the heart of the run that took us to third place.

Who are the weak links in the side?

While it's nice to think there are no weak links in our first choice team, a 20-goal striker should be top of our wish list. Beyond that, the weak links become apparent when the injuries start to pile up. We desperately need another right midfielder to replace Lennon when he's not fit, as switching Bale is not the answer and Nico Kranjcar can't buy a game. We picked up Ryan Nelson in January but another centre back should also be brought in.

Manager

If you ever tire of QPR's taste for farce and PR disasters, there's always the Football Association to turn to for your fix. When the two organisations combine, you end up with the ludicrous end to the Championship season we all endured in May.

One thing the FA has a real penchant for is making a complete cock up of appointing a manager for the national team. They pay vastly more than any other association in world football and yet almost always seem to get it wrong. Even when they get it right, and I don't recall too many objections to Fabio Capello's appointment after the Steve McLaren debacle, they then find a way of turning it into a problem by, say, awarding an even more lucrative and long term contract before, rather than after, an international tournament rendering the boss unsackable whatever the outcome on the field.

Now this is all a result of many, many contributing factors but if I was forced to pick out two I would go for the misapprehension that England labours under that we should be doing better than we are, and too much consideration given to non-football issues because of the feeding frenzy our national press likes to engage in with the national team. Whatever measure you take – population, youth training, historical results – England are performing on par by making it to international tournaments more often than not and getting to the last 16 or quarter finals. It is not a coincidence that this keeps happening regardless of who is in charge. On the rare occasions we do get a good manager (Bobby Robson, Terry Venables) it improves us by one round, but the insistence that England should be winning tournaments flies in the face of facts and history.

What England need is a manager who can drive players on to be better than they ever have been before, and there are currently two candidates with that skill: Harry Redknapp and Roy Hodgson. What they also need is a motivator capable of extracting the fingers from 22 millionaire’s arseholes and making them at least look like they want to be there when they pull on an England shirt. Again Redknapp fits the bill, but I’m not sure Hodgson does given how the players at Liverpool responded to his notoriously monotonous training sessions. As I said last week in the West Brom focus that says more for the tossers in our national squad than it does for Roy Hodgson but that’s the way football is.

So appoint Redknapp then? Well, it suddenly doesn’t seem as cut and dry as it once did. Firstly the FA have held off from even approaching candidates seemingly because they know it’s going to be Redknapp and they don’t want to upset Spurs or interfere with the job he’s doing at White Hart Lane during the season. The problem is their decorum hasn’t made any difference to the situation and Tottenham are on the cusp of finishing the season potless and outside the Champions League places anyway. Which then in turn raises questions about whether Redknapp is really the best man for the job after all? That’s without going into the fact that Roy Hodgson hangs suits in his closet while Redknapp stores skeletons.

Suddenly concerns that were brushed aside in the initial clamour for the swift coronation of Redknapp earlier this season are starting to be given more consideration. Harry is not, as he’s fond of telling Sky reporters, a “fucking wheeler dealer” but even he would concede that a big part of his success as a manager has been based on his ability to trade in the transfer market and build a team from that. To write him off as simply a wheeler and dealer is wrong, because he’s shown his motivation and tactical ability in guiding first Portsmouth to safety after returning for a second time and then Spurs away from the relegation zone when he first took over there with inherited squads. But England has what England has, and you cannot just go out and buy “the boy Hazard” if you find yourself short of a quality midfield player ahead of a big tournament.

I sort of feel as though I’m witnessing a large train crash here from afar. At Spurs a team seemingly destined for Champions League qualification and potentially an FA Cup win as well could end up with neither amidst uncertainty about whether the manager is staying or going – would things have really been any worse had the FA just appointed him and announced it all three months ago? Plenty of hindsight on LFW this week. And with England we have a caretaker manager scouting the players ahead of an international tournament this summer that looks for all the world like it could be the worst we’ve seen from our national team for quite some time.

Once more the Football Association swings through the game it’s supposed to be controlling like an out-of-control wrecking ball.

Scout Report

There has been much discussion this past week on the merits of changing a winning team. Mark Hughes left out Akos Buzsaky, who'd scored against Swansea in a 3-0 win, to return Shaun Derry to the line up at West Brom but the veteran central midfielder was poor in an overly negative opening hour to the game and only once he was replaced did Rangers start to dominate proceedings.

The question this week is whether Rangers should change not only their team, but also the system that has brought victories against Arsenal and Swansea in order to return Djibril Cisse to the starting line up. Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp would, if neutral, probably advise Rangers against this because it has been his deviation from a winning system that has done more than any talk about his impending appointment as England manager.

At White Hart Lane in October Tottenham were as near to perfect as I've ever seen a football team against QPR. They were actually beautiful, gracefully flowing forwards in formation like a flock of birds. Every Spurs player knew his role precisely and carried it out to the absolute letter, moving smoothly from left to right, back to front and attack to defence. It was awesome to be present for. It was to QPR's credit that they weren't buried by a double figure scoreline that day.

The system was based around a back four with two powerful centre halves and two pacy full backs. Scott Parker held the midfield, doing the leg work for Luka Modric who played centrally and pulled the strings for three attacking talents ahead of him. To his left and right Gareth Bale and Aaron Lennon provided breathtaking pace and width, straight ahead Rafael van der Vaat served as a link man to target man Emmanuel Adebayor. At one stage this team looked like it might genuinely win the league title.

The thing is that at the halfway stage of the season Spurs had used less players in the league this season than anybody else, and rather than replace like with like Redknapp went away from what was working to cover for inevitable absences when they came. Bale moved to the right to cover for Lennon, and naturally cut in on his left foot more often than not taking away the width from the right flank. To cover for Bale, Luka Modric moved left where he wasn't nearly as effective as he had been in the middle, and wasn't nearly as quick as Bale had been there before.

Redknapp also began playing Louis Saha, a bizarre January acquisition in my opinion, in a more conventional front two pairing which wasn't nearly as difficult to deal with as Adebayor and van der Vaat had been. I joked on transfer deadline day that Redknapp had come out of the courtroom at his tax avoidance trial on lunch and rung the office to say "get me Zaha" and would be furious when he emerged at the end of the day to find the ageing, injury prone Frenchman on his doorstep instead. In fact Spurs would have been far better served buying Palace's young speedster Wilfried, playing him wide on the right when Lennon was injured in a straight swap and leaving Bale and Modric where they were.

Players back and previous system restored Redknapp is now finding that, as happened last season, van der Vaat is nowhere near as effective in the second half of the season as he was in the first and while he was farting about with the attacking side of things the centre of the defence has lost form completely. Injuries to centre backs and goalkeepers has meant regular team changes right in the spot you don't want them but there can be few excuses for the performance levels of either William Gallas or Ledley King at Wembley last weekend which were of a park standard. King’s chronic lack of pace has never really seemed a problem before, but he looked dreadfully slow last week and was regularly dropping five or six yards deeper than the rest of the defensive line to compensate for that allowing Chelsea to play in the Spurs half without fear of being caught offside.

In attack Spurs are still capable of absolutely destroying QPR, but the heart of their defence is there to be got at which I why I'd change our own winning system this weekend and find space in the team for not only Jamie Mackie, Adel Taarabt and Bobby Zamora but Djibril Cisse as well. This is a vulnerable defence, low on confidence and form, ripe for another going over and the best way to do that, as Chelsea showed last week, is through pace and power which Cisse will add to our line up. Don’t forget as well that despite Van der Vaat taking dangerous corners at Wembley last week they’ve only scored five headed goals all season, and two of them were against Swansea, while at the other end Man Utd were able to move into a two goal lead against them with two goals from set pieces against the run of play.

Whichever way Hughes goes, this looks like a high scoring encounter waiting to happen.

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TacticalR added 00:42 - Apr 20 Tottenham's fast passing game at White Hart Lane was something to behold. Parker, Bale, Modrich and van der Vaart were at their peak. Hopefully we can offer more in defence and attack than we did that day. If Cissé is involved I really, really hope Mark Hughes has told him not to tackle anybody. And if Cissé and Zamora both play are we talking 4-4-2? We all know we haven't done well with that formation.

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Kaos_Agent added 04:02 - Apr 20 TacticalR, I agree with you about Cisse. And about the need to avoid aggressive play in general. With apologies to Lewis Carroll: Beware the Djibril-wock, my son! The paws that smite, the cleats that catch! Beware the Clatter bird, and shun Malian madness in this match!
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ozexile added 04:12 - Apr 20 Probably some of the biggest decisions in Hughes career this weekend. And I have no idea what he will do. Get it wrong and we're down. Get it right who knows? As we all predicted back in August we needed to win games against Bolton etc to avoid this situation. Yet we are QPR and never do anything easy..so here we are. all I can say is COYR'S as I have no idea how it will pan out!

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MelakaRanger added 06:11 - Apr 20 After Saturdays matches we will have a good idea of how we stand and after Boltons midweek game our fact will probably be sealed - be it survival or 'the drop'
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QPRski added 08:35 - Apr 20 I think this match will be an issue of which team is better set up both mentally and tactically. I admit I enjoy the way Spurs play when they are on form. But for this match I hope that they have a big hangover from the FA Cup and hope that Mark Hughes makes the correct analysis and tactics. It should be an interesting match. Certainly it is key to both teams futures.
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Juzzie added 11:02 - Apr 20 We've not played well 442 because we haven't had the players that can do that. With Cisse & Zamora upfront, I think it can work.... just as long as we can keep 11 players on the pitch.
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adhoc_qpr added 13:05 - Apr 20 We don't have the midfield to play 4-4-2. definately not against a Spurs midfield which is man for man streets ahead of us. The formation simply doesn't seem to really suit Mackie, Taarabt, Barton or Buz! What's the point in having a dangerous looking forward line of Zamora and Cisse if we have completely lost the midfield battle? I say field the team from the Swansea game, but maybe put Cisse is as one of the wide attacking players or as the lone forward in place of Bobby to play on the shoulders of Spurs slow centre backs.

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