Sherwood certainly gets strikers scoring

This week sees Spurs take on old interim boss in all but name, Tim Sherwood. Our rivals for the essential UEFA Europa League place, Liverpool and Southampton, face Newcastle United and Hull City respectively, both at home.



In the away game we were atrocious, Aston Villa should have won the game easily but Christian Benteke couldn't hit a barn door at the time. He then managed to get himself sent off after Ryan Mason provoked him, which proved to be the turning point. We grasped the lifeline and scraped a victory we didn't deserve.

If we cast our minds back to Sherwood's time at Tottenham in the hot seat, he took Emmanuel Adebayor from the sidelines and got him scoring goals again, now we are back to the Adebayor who doesn't impress so is sidelined.

Adebayor has of course commuted his future to Tottenham. He tweets that he is very happy at Tottenham and will stay to fight for his place. That will be against Tottenham's wishes. What he actually means is he is happy with his wage at Tottenham. West Ham won't pay his wages and want him on the cheap while Chelsea talk seems a little far fetched. Can't say as I'm expecting him to leave, unless we can arrange a season long loan where a side pays 75% of his wages.

Playing for only half a season under Sherwood he became our leading goalscorer for the season with 14 goals. Now Sherwood is at it again with Christian Benteke at Aston Villa. before Sherwood arrived he had scored 3 goals in 18 games, since Tim Sherwood has arrived he has scored 7 goals in 8 games.

Sherwood has flaws, he has faults, but he does seem to get strikers scoring goals. We will need to be wary as we are still very vulnerable at the back and it seems to me that we are playing with nerves. Individual mistakes have been creeping into our defensive game again. We concede far too many goals, 45 in the Premier League, Liverpool have conceded 36 and Southampton just 22.

Next season we should be a bit tighter but it's now that counts and this is a game we need three points in. Fortunately Sherwood plays an open brand of football at the moment so while we will concede chances we will also create them. It's one of those games where you just try to score one more than the opposition rather than playing to win 1-0, a shoot=out as it were.

It's a dangerous game to play, sometimes it works and sometimes, as against Liverpool away, it doesn't. Fingers crossed.