Tottenham Hotspur will entertain Manchester City at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this Wednesday night as they try to secure a good result at home in the EFL Cup. Spurs suffered a 1-0 loss away at Crystal Palace in the London derby recently. Thus, they would be eager to put in a good showing in midweek.
Ange Postecoglu will set his side up in a 4-3-3 formation and is expected to make some changes to his first team for this game. Richarlison, Timo Werner and Rodrigo Bentancur could get a chance to play from the start of this contest.
4-3-3 Tottenham Hotspur Predicted Lineup To Face Manchester City
Defence
Fraser Forster will feature in goal for the North London club as he hopes to maintain a clean sheet this week. Radu Dragusin will function alongside Ben Davies at the centre of the Tottenham backline as they focus on making life difficult for the Man City attackers throughout the game.
Archie Gray will fill in as the right-back while Destiny Udogie hopes to impress on the other side as the left-back. Both of them will have to perform their defensive duties well before they try to offer some decent support to the front players.
Midfield
James Maddison, Rodrigo Bentancur and Pape Matar Sarr will make up Tottenham’s midfield as they focus on getting a stranglehold of the game at the centre of the park. All three of them need to move the ball well if they are to hurt the Man City defenders this Wednesday night.
Yves Bissouma and Dejan Kulusevski will be named on the bench as they wait for their chance to shine in the second half if required.
Attack
Timo Werner will try to catch the eye down the left wing while Brennan Johnson looks to put his pace to good use as the right-sided wide player. Richarlison will spearhead Postecoglu’s attack down the middle. The Brazilian talent has to find a way to cause some problems for the opposition centre-backs in midweek.
Dominic Solanke will get a rest on the bench and might come on in the latter stages of the game if needed.
WHAT JAMIE CARRAGHER SAID
jamie carragher has slammed Tottenham boss Ange postecoglou after xI confirmation of two brainless players who has notting to offer.
carragher slammed timo werner says he should be rule out completely- Tottenham boss should restructure his team against Manchester City or he is coming for another defeats says “carragher”
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Tottenham’s troubles away from home continued as Jean-Philippe Mateta’s goal earned Crystal Palace their first Premier League victory of the season.
Ange Postecoglou’s side arrived at Selhurst Park having won seven of their last eight matches in all competitions yet were devoid of the type of confidence that such a run would usually spawn. It was the winless Palace who brought the swagger.
They needed only to strike once, Mateta dealing what proved to be the fatal blow on 31 minutes. Daniel Muñoz pounced on a Micky van de Ven error before delivering a cross which Eberechi Eze flicked expertly for the French forward to power home.
There was no riposte. Despite fielding – and replenishing – an offensive cast, Spurs failed to lay a glove on their hosts, who might have had a second had Eze timed a second-half run fractionally better.
Spurs have already accrued three away league defeats this season, a record Postecoglou must resolve if his side are to fulfil their potential.
Away hoodoo continues
Postecoglou’s first six away trips with Spurs in the league delivered four wins and two draws. His next 18 saw the team win four, draw five and – most worryingly – lose nine. This season, they sit 13th in the away league table having lost three in five.
For a club with pretensions to Champions League football and more, these are bona fide causes for concern. Speaking to the media post-match, Postecoglou pointed to his side’s inability to adjust to the stop-start nature of the game.
He said “We ended up doing some silly things, giving away silly fouls and just losing our composure, which just adds to that sort of [stop-start] game. And you just can’t get any traction.”
There is a school of thought that the midfield three of Yves Bissouma, James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski is simply too offensive for attritional matches such as these. Whereas the set-up has worked at home against sides willing to absorb pressure, it has struggled to contain opponents’ preferring the gung ho approach.
Rewind a year and one day. There were emotional scenes as Rodrigo Bentancur made his return from an eight-month-long ACL injury in a 2-1 win at Selhurst Palace. The Uruguayan was introduced with three minutes remaining on Sunday but Spurs looked far more comfortable playing into midfield with him in the six position. Perhaps a more balanced starting 11 is required.
Frazzled full-backs
Oliver Glasner deployed the elusive Eze and Ismaila Sarr as inside forwards behind Mateta and the pair worked smartly to create overloads on the wings before drifting into central areas.
Pedro Porro and Destiny Udogie were handed the unenviable task of curbing their influence and were pulled from pillar to post, with the additional threat of Tyrick Mitchell and Muñoz bombing forwards too much to handle. The Spurs full-backs were afforded precious little respite.
Advanced full-backs have, in fact, become something of a Postecoglou trademark during his time at Spurs but Porro and Udogie had their work cut out on this occasion. Their heat maps showed a far deeper average position while the pair, who had managed five shots in Spurs’ previous league outing against West Ham, fired goalwards just once.
It bears mentioning that Palace lost the impressive Michael Olise to Bayern Munich in the summer. Quite how Spurs would have fared against the Frenchman is a question best left unanswered.
Do Spurs have a difference maker?
Selhurst Park will have seldom seen better goals than Dele Alli’s mesmerising swivel and volley in 2016. And while Harry Kane’s late header to snatch three points two years later was rather less spectacular, it characterised a player who had made a habit of showing up when his team needed him most.
