It's a difficult choice about who to play on Thursday. Sure, you want to honour the spirit of the competition by playing your best 11 at home. And Spurs might drive their UEFA co-efficient up to a useful level with a few more wins. But big picture thinking has to be factored in, starting with a desire to build on the momentum of recent league games at Anfield this weekend.
A win would be huge, a big hurdle cleared. A draw wouldn't be bad either.
While winning the Europa League tie would be nice, it's hard to say whether it's worth shooting our bolt for. It's hard to say if the co-efficient could be raised enough to make a difference in CL seeding. We're ranked 28th on UEFA's list, clearly still in the third pot of a group stage draw. Of the 27 teams above us, nine won't make it or are in danger of not qualifying for next year's CL. With some - Inter, Valencia, Marseille, Dynamo Kiev - it's very close, one to three points from a qualifying position. If we're lucky, six of that nine would miss out. That would effectively take us to 22nd. Beat Inter, and we'd rise two more places. After that, impossible to forecast.
The next three clubs - Juve, PSG and Zenit - are still alive and theoretically could match our rise. We'd need to win two games with Inter then at least two more in the next round - 2 ranking pts. per win - to climb above ManCity. That would drop us into the second pot. Then we'd need to see how Juve, PSG and Zenit do because by matching us, we'd be back into the third.
How many resources would Spurs have to commit to win the Europa League or enough games to sit in the second pot? And would that put our CL qualification in jeopardy if top players got burned out or injured and hampered our league run in? A very tough decision to make.
Seven points above fifth with 10 to play is a hell of a drug.
I like the ideas of running the back four with Caulker, Naughton and Gallas getting prime time, a midfield with plenty of Holtby, Carroll, Livermore, Dempsey and Ade or even Obika up front. If nothing else, it gives them valuable playing time in the event that there are injuries to starters in league play.
We should also be aware that Inter are in a tough battle for the third and final Italian CL placing. They're two back of AC Milan, but other clubs are in the hunt, too. They also have to be conscious of their players health like we do. They've relied very heavily on a smaller group of starters than we are. We might well see them rest some key bodies as the two games they play in SerieA after playing us are home to Bologna this week, away to Sampdoria the week after. The ninth and 10 place teams, beatable, but not games they want to drop points from.
Excellent analysis. On the whole, we have ten games to play, pus two guaranteed EL ties, the first of which is this Thursday, making twelve in total. To win the EL, we would have to play five more games (2 quarter-finals, two semi-finals and the final). 17 games in two and a half months is a big ask.
However, I've always maintained that the 70 point mark would guarantee us CL football, unless both Arsenal and Chelsea go on miracle runs or Arsenal/Chelsea win the CL AND finish fifth. Both are unlikely in the extreme, so 70 points is the magic number, because much like 40 points guarantees you PL safety, a team garnering 70 points or more has never failed to gain CL football since the introduction of a 38-game season. Now, to reach 70 points from our current tally of 54, we will need five wins and a draw from our last ten games, i.e 16 points.
Liverpool (a)
Fulham (h)
Swansea (a)
Everton (h)
Chelsea (a)
City (h)
Wigan (a)
Southampton (h)
Stoke (a)
Sunderland (h)
Those are our remaining fixtures. Now, if we continue to garner points at the rate we have all season (roughly 1.9 points per game) that would put us at 73 points for the season. We can afford a slight dip in form, then, and an undue loss would not harm our aspirations. I feel fairly confident in predicting wins against Fulham, Southampton, Sunderland and Wigan, which gives us twelve points. Four more, then, will do for us, meaning we'll have to pick up four points from Chelsea, City, Liverpool, Everton and Swansea, which seems eminently doable.
The point being, I guess, that continued EL participation wouldn't harm our chances as much as it would have if we'd lost against Arsenal. We've passed a major hurdle, and there's no reason to think we can't compete on two fronts. Tired or not, our squad should be good enough to gain maximum points from Wigan, Southampton, Sunderland and Fulham, and should have enough to gain four points from the other five games. We can continue to put out relatively strong squads for the EL, then, without affecting these predictions.
-----------------Friedel-------------------
Naughton---Gallas--------Caulker----BAE
-----------Parker-------Holtby-------------
Lennon------------Bale----------------Sig
------------------Ade----------------------
Subs; Lloris, Dawson, Walker, Livermore, Dembele, Carroll, Defoe
Should do the job, and should be the team we look to employ.
edit; and as for fatigue, you've got to remember that Holtby's had a winter break with Schalke, Parker's only played about a quarter of a season so far (given Sandro's early season form and his own injury troubles), Ade had an impromptu two-week break with Togo before and after the Afcon, Defoe's been out for a month with injury, BAE's only just returned from a long one, Daws only started playing regularly from late-December onwards, Naughton, Caulker, and Sig have been in and out of the side, Livermore's barely played and Lloris has been regularly rotated with Friedel. All of the lads above have had significant rest/bench periods during the course of this season, so fatigue shouldn't really be a problem. We've also got a new fitness coach who no doubt has trained the lads better than our previous one did, judging by the absence of pulled hamstrings and training injuries.
Fatigue-wise, the only ones I've got concerns over are Bale, Lennon, Walker and Vertonghen, and even they've had limited periods of rest this season, albeit still not enough to justify playing them into the ground as May approaches.
