Bookies Reckon Its In The (Qara) Bag

Thursday night brings the welcome return of European football to The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in the shape of a Europa League 'League' match against Qarabag FK, the current champions of the Azerbaijan Premier League.

Having just checked the odds for the game (something I'm not usually interested in as a non-gambler) I see that Spurs are 1/6 to win. Probably not surprising given the relative strength on paper at least of the respective leagues and the current squads available to the coaches to select from.

More surprising to me was the odds given for the eventual winners of the competition:

Taken from 'Oddschecker' on Wednesday 25th September

This shows that along with Manchester United, Spurs are joint favourites. Given that the ENIC sponsored trophy drought now stretches to sixteen seasons I find their optimism slightly baffling. I also know that these odds are affected by wagers that have been placed so some people somewhere must have a lot more faith than me. Its not such a surprise to see Athletic Bilbao so high up the list given that the final is at their home ground.

This won't be the first time the sides have met, although its nine years since the last encounter also in the Europa League. The home game in the Group J was matchday one, notable for a bloke called Heung-Min Son scoring his first two goals for the club in a 3-1 win. 

Among the subs were Harry Kane (whatever happened to him?) and Ben Davies, the only other player bar Sonny still at the club today. Interestingly, Qarabag still have the same coach, Gurban Gurbanov who's actually been in charge since 2010. For a year in 2017 he held the dual role of National Team Manager as well which I'd imagine takes some doing. I just bet that there'll be a Qarabag internet fan somewhere in his basement posting that Gurbanov "has taken the club as far as he can" and "why weren't we in for Mourinho or Conte this summer?"


The second game was matchday five played in Azerbaijan two months later. This time despite having twenty four attempts on goal we won by a solitary Harry Kane strike.


This time Ben Davies started and the main men were together at centre back. 

This current Qarabag team could be a much trickier opponent than their more naive predecessors. In last years competition they only narrowly lost to Bayer Leverkusen the all conquering German side who only lost once all season. It took a goal seven minutes into stoppage time from Patrick Schtick to see Leverkusen through.


Which brings me nicely onto team selection for this game. To me, this would have been a better fixture to play the 'Coventry' line up from last week. Mainly because if this does go belly up there's another seven games in this re-vamped version of the competition to put things right. This point is re-enforced in my brain by the upcoming match on Sunday at Old Trafford.  

The fact that its possible to name twelve substitutes if you want to means that five or six of the youngsters should get some match experience, even if its only on the bench. I'm not even going to attempt to guess the side Ange will pick to start the game, the only certainties are that Romero won't be there due to suspension and of course Richarlison and Odebert are still injured. I think everybody wants to see Mikey Moore start. Personally I'd like Archie Gray to play in midfield although I guess he's more likely to be filling in at right-back as Spence isn't in the Euro squad and I'd let Bergvall start just behind the front three.

Mikey Moore, you know it makes sense Ange.

Going back to Spurs being joint favourites for the competition, a run to the final could involve seventeen matches. Obviously, making the final would be brilliant, although the way things work we'd probably end up playing Bilbao. The most important thing to me will be adding to the squad in January because the FA Cup will be starting, we could still be in the League Cup (the draw is happening in about 15 minutes) and obviously we still have to get as high as we can in the League.

EDIT: We've just drawn Manchester City in the League Cup so we won't have this competition to worry about in the new year.






 

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