Saints At Spurs The Preview
Saints head to White Hart Lane knowing that their chances of still being well clear of relegation rely more on results elsewhere.
The aim by 5pm on Saturday night is to make sure that Wigan thletic are no nearer to us than they start the day, but you will get better odds for a West Brom home win against Wigan than you will for Saints to go into the lions den in North London and come out of it with three points, therefore its fair to assume our fate on Saturday is going to be more influenced by events in the Midlands than at Spurs.
In truth our chances at White Hart Lane are possibly as bad as on any other away trip this season, in short Spurs attack quickly breaking from defence with pace and thats just the sort of thing we cant handle as was shown in our defeat to West Brom last week and indeed at Newcastle back in February, in relegation battles the side that stays up is the one that hits form in the run in and the one that drops (and i dont just mean get relegated) here is the one that finds it hard to win, after three games without a win we go to Spurs with it all pointing to being a fourth.
But of course Saints have come back from adversity before this season, at other times we have gone into games needing to get results when it looked a hopeless situation and managed to get them so it wont be a complete cake walk for Tottenham.
If Luke Shaw returns from injury then that will be a bonus as he will add pace to the equation, but the big question at the back is in the centre, put bluntly we have got away with it of late there, mistakes have been made, but in the main up until the West Brom game those mistakes havent been punished as was the case at Reading where the home side were presented with three gilt edged chances by poor defending that they spurned.
Make no bones about it, this will be a hard task for Saints but we might be able to nick something, however thats far from guaranteed, as i started the article with, what happens elsewhere is probably more important today and then next week our fate is truly back in our hands.
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