On Saturday, we’re visited by the club that, in some people’s eyes, have become our rivals. Arguably, we’re the clubs with the fiercest ambitions to break into the elite group, and who have the best chances of making the transition. However, we both remain the nearly men.

Despite the defeat to Chelsea, the players seem to be in a confident frame of mind and looking forward to this game, judging from interviews with Milner and Taylor. Their feeling is that they matched Chelsea, but were unlucky.
We have no fresh injuries, but Duff remains doubtful. It is possible that we will start with the same eleven as Wedneday, but it is difficult to second guess Roeder’s thinking on this. He may bring back Sibierski, and play a 4-4-2, but it is anyone’s guess who might be dropped from Wednesday’s five man midfield. Judging from this site, most of us would opt for Parker, but axing the captain is a difficult call.

Roeder has publicly acknowledged that Dyer is more effective down the middle, and personally I’m hoping that he’ll re-form the Dyer – Martins partnership.

Babayaro is back from suspension, but Huntingdon did sufficiently well at left back to give Roeder a tricky decision. I think he’ll opt for Babayaro’s attacking ability.

As for Spurs, they’ve recovered from their shaky start to the season. Berbatov seems to be finding his feet, and they have a promising new young midfielder in Huddlestone for us to look at. They play entertaining football, but have also had their patchy results. In reality, they seem no nearer to breaking into the top four than we do.

Lennon and Keane are out injured, which is a big bonus for us. Jenas is also out – but let’s not start that old debate. King returns after being rested in midweek, but there have been question marks this season about his fitness.
Although we both played in midweek, Spurs had the added problem of extra time, and that might tell in our favour in the final quarter of the match. Even the weather is on our side, in that they may have to travel by train or coach due to the cancellation of domestic flights. (aaawww!)

I think the mood in the camp is good, and I fancy us to win this one. It should be an entertaining game.

Squads
NUFC: Given, Srnicek, Solano, Babayaro, Taylor, Ramage, Huntington, Parker, Butt, Emre, Milner, Duff, Pattison, Troisi, Gate, Edgar, Martins, Dyer, Sibierski, Luque, Rossi, Carroll.

THFC: Robinson, Cerny, Chimbonda, Lee, Dawson, King, Assou-Ekotto, Stalteri, Davenport, Gardner, Zokora, Davids, Tainio, Murphy, Ghaly, Malbranque, Ziegler, Huddlestone, Berbatov, Mido, Defoe.

Injuries
The usual suspects - Ameobi, Bernard, Bramble, Carr, Harper, Moore, N’Zogbia and Owen, plus possibly Duff.
For Spurs – Jenas, Keane, and probably Lennon.

Ref
Alan Wiley

Predicted Line-up
Given – Solano, Taylor, Ramage, Babayaro – Milner, Emre, Butt, Parker – Dyer, Martins.

Prediction
2-1 to us.