Liverpool v Tottenham: Preview, Team News,Live Stream

Tottenham face a mammoth task against an in-form Liverpool  who can go  top of the Premier League with a win at Anfield this afternoon.

Up-dated with Team:

Team: Lloris; Naughton, Kaboul, Vertonghen, Rose; Bentaleb, Sigurdsson; Lennon, Chadli, Eriksen; Soldado. Subs: Friedel, Dawson, Dembele, Sandro, Townsend, Winks, Kane.

Playing Liverpool at Anfield has always been a difficult prospect for Tottenham and having suffered an embarrassing 5 – 0 defeat at home in December which brought Andre Villas-Boas time as Spurs manager to an end, the task will be doubly difficult this afternoon.

Date: Sunday, 30th March, 2014

Kick-off Time: 4.00pm (UK time)
TV Channel: Sky Sports 1

Liverpool

Liverpool are in an excellent run of form being undefeated in the Premier League in 2014 and have won their last 7 league games. They have the added incentive following yesterday’s results that a win will take them two points clear at the top of the league although Manchester City will have 2 matches in hand to bridge the 4-point gap. A draw will take them level with Chelsea but ahead on goal difference. Liverpool are the leading goalscorers in the league with 84 goals.

Liverpool have only lost at Anfield once in the past 13 months, losing to Southampton in September, when they also failed to score for the only time at home this season. The only other team to prevent Liverpool scoring in a league game was Arsenal in November.

Liverpool will look to put Tottenham to the sword as early as possible, looking for a quick start to shatter Tottenham’s fragile self-confidence. Liverpool opened up Tottenham’s defence with ease at White Hart Lane and they will be confident of doing so again.

Tottenham

Spurs have players returning from injury providing Tim Sherwood with options that he didn’t have a few weeks ago. It, however, also brings selection dilemmas which he will have to resolve to get the best performance from his team.

• Sherwood will expect commitment from his players, something which has been absent from their play against the top-4 teams this season.

• He will want the players to cut out the individual errors which have plagued the team this season. Last weekend  it was Kyle Naughton who caught the disease which has cost Tottenham dearly in so many games.

• He will want to avoid conceding an early goal. Such a setback could prove very damaging to Spurs hopes for the afternoon.

• He will want to ensure that Spurs don’t suffer another embarrassing defeat – it could prove damaging to his prospects for next season.

• He must avoid trying to play a high-line in defence. Southampton caught Spurs out last week and Suarez and co. will accept any opportunity generously gifted to them.

Team News

Tottenham have almost a full squad available with only Kyle Walker and Erik Lamela out with injury. There is uncertainty over Emmanuel Adebayor’s availability, dependent on whether he has recovered from the slight injury which kept him out of last week’s win. If he’s not fit, then Roberto Soldado will have the chance to build on last week’s encouraging display and understanding with Christian Eriksen. Vlad Chiriches returned to training and played for the Under-21 team on Friday evening.

Liverpool will be at full strength having had a settled team through much of the season.

Outcome

This is Tottenham’s last opportunity to make a statement, get a result, against a top-4 team. Following Palace’s win over Chelsea, only Fulham have a worse record than Spurs against those teams.

The odds are stacked heavily against Spurs this afternoon but they went to Lisbon expecting the worse against Benfica and surprised us, perhaps…….