The big news ahead of this evening's game is that Jermain Defoe and Aaron Lennon are back in contention and with Rafael van der Vaart ruled out, both could play from the start.

"Jermain has trained okay in the last couple of days and Aaron Lennon as well, he's coming back, he's looked sharp," said Harry on Friday.

Another huge weekend as the race at the top tightens and the England managerial role remains vacant. Let's focus on club over country for now, though, and preview this week's best potential fantasy performers... I. Liverpool @ Manchester United: Huge. ... Continue reading →

It was all slightly akin to a chess game, n'est ce pas? And not one of those awesome chess games either, in which one lad loses his rag somewhat, dashes the pieces across the board and clobbers his opponent with the clock, leading to a mass brawl involving spectators and allsorts. This was one of those chess games in which white thoughtfully strokes his chin for a good seven or eight minutes, before moving his bishop a few diagonals backwards whence he came, prompting black to ponder for four minutes himself, hover his hand over his queen, retract hand, ponder some more, and then move his knight back into its starting position.

THFC1882 present a match report by Anthony Lombardi

Liverpool and Tottenham: Both Clubs Fail to Dare and To Do.

Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur drew 0-0 at Anfield, in a tight Premier League encounter that neither team wanted to lose, or seemed determined enough to try and win.

Be great if he scored!...Liverpool welcome Tottenham to Anfield Monday night as they look to continue their good run of form and pick up some more points in the League. With Luis Suarez completing his ban, the Anfield faithful can't wait to see him back on the pitch, an extra threat for Spurs to be aware of.

Chelsea v Manchester United: A Battle Of Widths - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

According to Castrol EDGE Performance analysis, both Manchester United and Chelsea's wingers have been key to both club's positive play this season, with Antonio Valencia, Nani, Juan Mata and Daniel Sturridge all enjoying impressive campaigns.

THFC1882 presents guest writer Kenny Palmer's report of Tottenham Hotspur versus Wigan:

A man of the match performance by Gareth Bale against obliging opponents Wigan helped reignite Spurs title challenge, as they now sit just five points behind the Manchester clubs following the leaders City's defeat to Everton.

Tottenham yesterday saw both Roman Pavlyuchenko and Steven Pienaar leave White Hart Lane for Lokomotiv Moscow and Everton respectfully. Both moves do not come as a surprise, in fact if anything, they were both overdue.

After having been linked with a move away from Tottenham for quite some time, Pavyluchenko finally made the switch to Lokomotiv for a reported £8 million.

I. Stoke @ Manchester United: Massive injury problems for Sir Alex's men as they look to keep pace with Manchester City at the top of the table. The latest is an injury to their new #1 goalkeeper Anders Lindegaard who ... Continue reading →

THFC1882 welcomes back guest writer Kenny Palmer with a preview of Tottenham Hotspur versus Wigan.

A week is a long time in football, as Spurs two contrasting performances highlighted. Heroic in defeat against Manchester City earning plaudits for the character they showed in coming back from 2-0 down to level the scores before losing to an injury time penalty.

"Go on, touch it. I've put the safety on."Football on a Friday night? It's just not cricket. Perhaps that was the reason for Tottenham's utterly distasteful performance at Vicarage Road as they scraped past a plucky Watford. If you were to believe the general theme of the commentary and post-match media reports, you'd be forgiven for thinking Spurs arrived in north west London, rudely parked their giant team coach wherever they chose, shaped to headbutt anyone and everyone on their way in and spend the entire game cheating and coercing the ref into allowing them victory.

Hertfordshire Fire Service MuseumAdabeyor was disappointed to find we were going to play a football match and not to visit this must see Watford feature. The JimmyG2 Column I know the Watford Civic and Preservation Society will disagree but Watford was more than just horrible and disgraceful, it was horrible disgraceful.

Even my wife wondered why on earth Spurs were playing football on a Friday. By the end of the match I knew exactly what she meant. As it was ESPN, perhaps Spurs prepared for the Saturday evening game, because they certainly weren't ready for this one.

This was dire, as disorganised as Harry's tax return.

The Man City (and ex-Arsenal) striker Emmanuel Adebayor has been a godsend for Tottenham this season with nine goals that have helped Harry Redknapp's team reach the Champions League places. But Adebayor wasn't allowed to face his parent side last weekend when Man City beat Spurs 3-2, Arsene Wenger thinks that this particular loan deal [.

Well, what a day in the old Anglais de Premiero that was. (Pretty sure that's a flawless translation) Barely had we put on a pair of trousers that could be deemed fit for public display was Fernando Torres and his new chums doing a hilarious job of not beating Norwich at Carrow Road.

So here we go, without doubt the biggest game since our last eye-catching fixture for which three points were at stake. While the win over a pretty inept Everton had all and sundry proclaiming this lilywhite vintage the greatest thing since Danny Blanchflower sliced a loaf, the draw with uber-negative Wolves had Hansen imploring all Spurs-supporting MoTD viewers to find their nearest cliff-top and hurl themselves in anguish – so whatever the outcome against table-topping City the reaction will presumably border on the apocalyptic.

It's been a frustrating period for Jermain Defoe whereby he has spent most of his time on the bench in recent weeks. Despite scoring some valuable goals when he has been on the pitch, the striker is a firm third in the White Hart Lane pecking order behind Adebayor and VDV.

JD will surely get his chance this weekend however as Adebayor is forced to sit out the game against his parent club and in his newspaper column, manager Harry Redknapp almost went overboard in praising his ‘back up' striker.

So finally this much-vaunted "Game in Hand" is upon us. Truth be told, I will be a little sad to see it go. It has practically become part of the family, like a scruffy, uncouth urchin discovered in the wreckage of the summer riots, and adopted by the cheery folk of White Hart Lane. And let's face it, this Game in Hand has proved more useful than the Sword of Omens when it comes to pointless bickering with fans of l'Arse, Chelski, Liverpool and the like.

First Paul Scholes and now bearded volleyball whizz, Terry Henry. Two mammoths of the game busting open the crypts of their Premiership careers for one last undignified waltz under the lights; with every possibility of coughing up something unsavoury into the laps of their adoring fans and making a mess of everything that was once good.

So the Premier League season is finally here, it's Tottenham Hotspur's opening game versus Everton..........

That's how the preview for this one should have started, but the unfortunate and unseemly rioting of early August put paid to Spurs opening fixture. Now this is the game in hand it's vital that Spurs get maximum points if they want to be taken seriously as title challengers.

It's January, as you might've noticed; and if you hadn't I would suggest those New Year's resolutions about not drinking anything that really ought to be kept on a shelf in the shed aren't going all that well. For the rest of you, you know the score. It's the beginning of the year and that can mean only one thing: the always-good-for-a-laugh-don't-believe-everything-you hear-better-off-not-opening-any-tabloid-newspapers-or-football-websites-for-a-month-pick-any-name-out-of-a-hat.

It's January, as you might've noticed; and if you hadn't I would suggest those New Year's resolutions about not drinking anything that really ought to be kept on a shelf in the shed aren't going all that well. For the rest of you, you know the score. It's the beginning of the year and that can mean only one thing: the always-good-for-a-laugh-don't-believe-everything-you hear-better-off-not-opening-any-tabloid-newspapers-or-football-websites-for-a-month-pick-any-name-out-of-a-hat.

Excuse me while I cough up an organ, momentarily- I've just made the dreadful mistake of going on a post-New Year jog in weather I can only describe as ‘a bit blustery'. If I don't crumple onto the keyboard before the day's out it'll be a minor miracleeeeeeeeertttttttttttttyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyhjjj.

Tottenham Hotspurs ability to stay close with the two Manchester teams, especially with the Lilywhites' latest victory over West Bromwhich Albiom, which continue to lift Spurs confidence in challenging for the title.

The London club's winning goal scorer against West Brom, Jermaine Defoe, revealed that his team will continue to provide pressure towards Man City along with Man United, who are currently ahead of Harry Redknapp teams in the table.

For much of this season Spurs manager Harry Redknapp has argued that his options up front come down to a straight choice between Rafael van der Vaart and Jermain Defoe. Almost without exception, the manager comes down on the side of the Dutchman but is it time to give JD a run in the side, even if it's at the expense of Adebayor up front?

So ‘Arry reckons he might get a bit bored managing England:

‘I enjoy the day-to-day coming in to work with players, said the media-introvert on Radio 4 this week- going out on the training pitch every day, seeing the players.

I don't know if seeing players once every six or seven weeks.

So ‘Arry reckons he might get a bit bored managing England:

‘I enjoy the day-to-day coming in to work with players, said the media-introvert on Radio 4 this week- going out on the training pitch every day, seeing the players.

I don't know if seeing players once every six or seven weeks.

It has often been the case this season that Tottenham have had to leave out the likes of Sandro and Jermain Defoe, simply because we have had eleven players performing at an impressive and consistent level. With both Emanuel Adebayor and Rafael Van der Vaart in great goal scoring form, Defoe has repeatedly had to rely on injuries to come into the team.

Everybody yearns to be up there, to be a contender. Yet we're still puzzling over what success feels like. Here's another side of it, being the envy of other fans. Top four, playing dazzling football. It won't be long before the negative coverage begins. Players who have been doing well for an entire season will be picked on by pundits after a single poor performance, or young men playing out of their skin will fail to be at the top of their game for one of their 50 or so performances and people will pick holes.

A couple of days ago, I happened to comment on Twitter following Man Utd's 5-0 thrashing of Wigan at Old Trafford and Man City's 0-0 away draw with West Bromwich Albion, that the title was now down to a two horse race as both Arsenal, Chelsea, and Liverpool had failed to beat either Wolves, Fulham or Blackburn respectively.

The most vocal of football agents Oleg Artemov has been touting his client Roman Pavlyuchenko around this week with Anzi the latest Russian club to be linked with the striker.

"At the beginning, Roman absolutely ignored Anzhi," Artemov told the Russian press.

"He wasn't against going back to Russia, but not to the Makhachkala-based team, but Pavlyuchenko is tired of the uncertainty and the lack of match action.

Tottenham failed to close the gap on the top two after a thrilling 1-1 draw with Chelsea at White Hart Lane.
Both sides were chasing victory to keep pace with the runaway leaders, but cancelled each other out in a free-flowing encounter.
Controversial Chelsea skipper John Terry played 24 hours after discovering he was being charged with racially abusing QPR defender Anton Ferdinand.

That Tottenham, can they do it? Contenders? Say no more. The JimmyG2 Column. It's getting deucedly difficult to write about Spurs these days. We've had it easy for years: missed opportunities; failures to close games out; last ditch losses; individual poor performances; lack of winning mentality; Jenas.

It was all a bit of a rush. Fancy letting family stuff get in the way of football. What on earth is happening to me? Anyone would think it's Christmas or something.

So when I switched on the TV it took me a moment to get my bearings. First thing top left hand corner, read it three times just to make sure and remember to breathe.

Many a time and oft my Spurs-supporting chum Ian has peddled the theory that Gareth Bale should be shoved right up the top, through the middle, and play as an out-and-out centre-forward. Outlandish it may be, but last night actually provided a glimpse of how the world would be run if Ian were King.

By Alan Duffy

On Boxing Day, Martin O'Neill's Sunderland were a goal ahead and looking to pick up all three points against Everton when, early in the second-half, the Toffees' diminutive schemer Leon Osman ran into the Black Cats box with the intention of shooting on goal.

By Alan Duffy

Norwich City 0-2 Tottenham Hotspur Premier League 27th December 2011

It's fair to say that Gareth Bale, for the last couple of seasons, has been the subject of more hype and superlatives than most footballers in the Premier League.

Still sitting in third place behind the two Manchester sides, who are leading the table, Tottenham Hotspurs are feeling that they have a legitimate shot in competing for the title challenge but in order to make things easier they need something more.

According to the Lilywhites' manager, Harry Redknapp, it would be much better for his team if they can grab a big name signing this January, as that superstar can lift the team's performance into the same level as the two Manchester teams.

Apologies for the tardiness – AANP Towers has been overrun by tiny people the last few days...

And it had all begun so well. Our lot spent the opening minutes pinging the ball between themselves with such dizzying rapidity that the only time a Chelski touched the thing in the opening ten minutes was that lad on halfway, who was promptly crunched by Sandro, releasing Bale to release Adebayor for our goal.

With so many hamstring injuries at the Lane this week the team for tonight virtually picks itself. The big news once again is with Rafael van der Vaart whose scan seemed to give the Dutchman the green light to return to the starting XI.

Before the game, Harry spoke about VDV and gave some news about other recent injury victims.