Spurs season preview 17/18

Following on from an impressive 16/17 season, Spurs will be looking to go one better this year, especially in the Champions League.

In this preview, I’ll be looking at the three different parts of Spurs’ season and detail out, how each competition might pan out for us.

Premier League

It’ll be hard to follow such an incredible league campaign, but that is the task Mauricio Pochettino has on his hands. The hardest thing that will have to be contended with is the move to Wembley for the season and this apparent ‘curse’ Spurs have at Wembley. There were encouraging signs in the pre-season win over Juventus but, it was only a friendly after all, and how much can really be taken away from a friendly. The most worrying thing to come out of that was the injury to our only senior right back, the extent of Trippier’s injury isn’t known yet but will this finally spring Pochettino into some market action.

Tottenham are the only team in the entire league to not have bought a single player so far, which is admirable of the faith Pochettino has in his current group of players and in the youth prospects on the cusp of the first team like those featured in pre-season like Georgiou, Miller and Walker-Peters. On the other hand, all this faith might be good but with the likes of Man city, United, Chelsea, Arsenal and even Liverpool are Spurs going to be left behind.

If you look around at other previews, people are predicting Spurs to either scrape a top four finish through to struggling to qualify for the Europa League. This will depend on if there is any investment between now and the end of August, and whether or not the free spending clubs’ signings hit the ground running especially the new strikers of Lacazette, Lukaku and Morata.

Predicted finish- 5^th

FA Cup and Carabao Cup

These two cups are a lot harder to predict as to their outcome, as the teams that Spurs could get are as random as it gets. One thing that can be said is that Pochettino needs to take the League Cup, now the Carabao Cup, more seriously as the side that faced Liverpool in last season’s 4^th round contained 10

changes from the Premier League game the previous weekend. The label this team has had now for 3 seasons is that it’s too good not to have won things yet, in the previous two years, Pochettino has fielded weakened teams in Cup competitions to focus on the league which did end in fantastic seasons but no silverware at the end. Going into his fourth season in charge, Pochettino needs to bring home a trophy to convince the bigger players that Tottenham is the place to be in the coming years.

Champions League

Last season’s Champions League campaign could be called nothing short of an embarrassment. Finishing third, in what was considered an easy group and 1 win at home is simply not good enough for a side of our quality. We won’t know our group fate till the end of August but whatever the result we need to add to our squad to help us survive competing on multiple fronts. If we suffer injuries in key areas, especially up front then there is a serious lack of fire power, Son was used as a makeshift forward against Leverkusen last season and it didn’t work as he was just chasing shadows. The lack of squad depth could be the problem with going far in the Champions League but with the right investment and if we hit the ground running at Wembley and adjust our style to fit the bigger pitch then there is no reason why we can’t go far.

Prediction- Quarter Final