Spurs vs The Chairboys – A Fighting Preview

On Monday evening, Tottenham face Wycombe Wanderers in the fourth round of the FA Cup. It represents only the second time the two sides have ever met, with the first meeting coming back at the Lane in 2017. It was a helter-skelter game in which a 97^th minute winner from Son Heung-min saw us edge the Chairboys 4-3. Textbook Spurs heart-in-mouth drama.

This rematch will see cult-hero and Soccer AM star Adebayo Akinfenwa try his luck against a – hopefully – much rotated back line.

Firstly, a message to the broadcasters:

Fuck you.

Thanks to their selfish priorities, we face Liverpool on Thursday, a mere 3 days after our trip to Adams Park. Why could we not play on Saturday or Sunday I hear you ask…a great question.

I prefer to take it as a compliment; perhaps we play such entertaining football that we simply must be shown live on TV.

Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?

It appears as though we are imperative viewing for these broadcasters, and coupled with the mighty Wycombe as our opponents, it’s shoo-in to be a cracking game. Well… maybe not.

Wycombe aren’t exactly high-flying in the Championship. In fact, they’re rather low-(f)lying. Sitting pretty at the bottom of the league, it’s fair to assume that their priorities would be staying in the league rather than a little journey in the FA Cup which their fans can’t enjoy in the flesh (a genuine shame).

With that in mind, we’re hoping Jose rings the changes. Here’s my predicted line-up.

Hart; Doherty, Tanganga, Sanchez, Davies; Winks, Sissoko; Lucas, Lamela, Bale; Vinicius

With Alli’s future up in the air (and supposedly carrying a knock and defo not talking to PSG), we could see a return to the starting line-up for Erik Lamela who has recently recovered from Coronavirus and injury. Moussa Sissoko is also likely to start with Mourinho wanting to keep Hojbjerg fresh for Thursday’s visit of Liverpool and Harvey White – who played excellently against Marine in CM – has recently been loaned out to Portsmouth. A start for young Alfie Devine would be a surprise, however we can expect to see him on the bench.

A couple of (silly) stats:

• Heung-Min Son will be hoping to pull ahead of Paul Hayes as leading goal scorer in this fixture – both notched a brace last time out. Clinical.
• Spurs have won 100% of the games we’ve played against Wycombe.
• Spurs have only lost 2 out of 19 FA Cup matches against teams with ‘Wanderers’ in their name. (Bolton Wanderers on 13^th Feb 1935 and 10^th January 1978).
• We are unbeaten in our last 5 FA Cup fixtures on this day (25^th January)
• Wycombe have scored 16 goals in 23 league games this season. Harry Kane has been directly involved in 7 more goals (12G+11A) in the league in 5 fewer games.
• Wycombe have been promoted twice since we played out the thrilling 4-3 in 2017.

My prediction: 4-0 Spurs