Spurs in the Europa League: Road to Gdańsk

[GutBucket]

Perfect draw really. Dinamo always had a goal of reaching this stage in Europa and they finally did it, they won't care too much about the result now. They will be happy that their players will get exposure against a popular team and that some prices will increase when they sell them. Dinamo needs to focus on winning the league now, especially since main contender is lead by a former coach (and he was loved by fans, current coach is a brother of former chairman who escaped to Bosnia to escape prison sentence for stealing money from the club, so he will want to prove himself and get some fans on his side).

There are some good players there:
Moro- similar to Modric and Badelj

Petkovic- poor man's Giroud but better at passing than scoring, battles for first team place with Kramaric in National Team

Orsic-loves to cut from left wing and score pretty goals, caused plenty of problems to Manchester City last year

Ivanusec-very young, loves to dribble and has that magical ability to score nice goals, not consistent yet

Ademi-bit like Xhaka in talent and mentality, will be on a yellow card very early I bet

Theophile-Catherine-strong and fast CB, has brainfarts sometimes

Gvardiol-one for the future, very solid CB

Livakovic-amazing goalkeeper, first choice for NT, he will probably frustrate us somewhat

Majer-creative but struggles with fitness and not being fat

They score a lot from wings with Petkovic being able to pass well for a striker and there is lots of creativity there but defense isn't good enough for this level and they will commit too many fouls on our wingers. It wouldn't surprise me to see another special goal from Moura after he dribbles past 3-4 players. We will definitely go through but need to be wary of them in final third, they make very good runs without ball. Defensively there isn't enough pace for them and we should score semi-easily.

 

[cider spurs]

Happy with that.

Hopefully a couple of wins pre Zagreb will set us up nicely.

 

[dontcallme]

While I get the logic of it helping us with regards the Arsenal match and am pleased it is us that have had their tie moved .
I still do not get the logic of moving the tie in the first place can someone explain the reason EUFA moved our match so I can log it for future situations .

 

[C0YS]

Wow we've done well there. Then the winner of Granada and Molde should we get through please.

Granada are a very decent side, I'd hope to avoid them. Slavia Prague or Rangers is probably the weakest tie in the competition, by quite a margin I'd say. Apart from that, upsets aside I'd say every team has a chance to go all the way, and will be tricky. As is normal at that stage of this competition.

 

[isaac94]

Granada are a very decent side, I'd hope to avoid them. Slavia Prague or Rangers is probably the weakest tie in the competition, by quite a margin I'd say. Apart from that, upsets aside I'd say every team has a chance to go all the way, and will be tricky. As is normal at that stage of this competition.

Slavia were class against Leicester last night

 

[Metalhead]

I tend to agree with the other poster about meeting a strong team now but I keep hoping for a turnround of form rather than the useless mob who got outfoxed by the mighty Potter and who fell for the old West Ham rope-a-dope trick

As the positive Spurs fans that I'm sure we all are, let's hope that the team got a boost from the result the other night.

 

[C0YS]

I agree, the narrative that anyone outside a top league is a "farmer" makes me cringe so much and is just pure ignroance

I still remember that fucking Basel team many years ago, who made minced meat out of our defense, I think in the end we actually made it close, but, frankly they should have won over the two legs much more comfortably than they did. I remember thinking, that Mo Salah guy, we need to sign him. Since that game I always thought he could go right to the top.

 

[freeeki]

We’ve played Dinamo Zagreb once before, in November 2008.

Our previous Europa game was two weeks earlier, we lost 2-0 to Udinese which culminated in the sacking of Juande Ramos.

It was Harry Redknapp’s first European game in charge, and was the week after we drew 4-4 with Arsenal.

Our team included Gareth Bale and Luka Modric. Theirs included Dejan Lovren and Mario Mandzukic.

We won 4-0, with goals from Huddlestone, and a Darren Bent hat trick.

 

[C0YS]

Slavia were class against Leicester last night

Yeah, and FC Midtjylland were class against Slavia. These ties can be tough, but Granada, who knocked out Napoli in the last round, have been very solid in La Liga for two years now and despite their patchy form recently I'd still rather Slavia than them. Though a return of Soldado might be pretty cool.

 

[spurs mental]

We’ve played Dinamo Zagreb once before, in November 2008.

Our previous Europa game was two weeks earlier, we lost 2-0 to Udinese which culminated in the sacking of Juande Ramos.

It was Harry Redknapp’s first European game in charge, and was the week after we drew 4-4 with Arsenal.

Our team included Gareth Bale and Luka Modric. Theirs included Dejan Lovren and Mario Mandzukic.

We won 4-0, with goals from Huddlestone, and a Darren Bent hat trick.

A Huddlestone thunderbastard IIRC

 

[RichieS]

Woah oh oh woah woah! Woooooah oh woah woah! Yeah, it's pretty catchy!

Is it a Bon Jovi song?!

 

[mr ashley]

Worse than last year because amazing coach left and best player (Olmo). Pretty good team though except for defense that is mediocore and FBs are pretty shit.

What about Zagreb?

 

[RichieS]

Always had a soft spot for Zagreb with Modric, Kranjcar, Corluka all coming through there academy. If you look at there history they have had some serious players Šuker, Olic, Mandžukić, Prosinečki, Boban

IIRC, Boban was one of those players like Stoichkov, Hagi, Litmanen etc who would be much more highly regarded if he'd played for a major nation.

 

[Shadydan]

Great draw that

 

[C0YS]

We’ve played Dinamo Zagreb once before, in November 2008.

Our previous Europa game was two weeks earlier, we lost 2-0 to Udinese which culminated in the sacking of Juande Ramos.

It was Harry Redknapp’s first European game in charge, and was the week after we drew 4-4 with Arsenal.

Our team included Gareth Bale and Luka Modric. Theirs included Dejan Lovren and Mario Mandzukic.

We won 4-0, with goals from Huddlestone, and a Darren Bent hat trick.

Interesting to note that a young Mario Mandžukić and Diego Lovern lined up against us that day.

I remember that in those days Mandzukic was seen by many as a less useful Olic and in fact while he was a known talent, no one really made the plunge until he was 24, and that was a relegation-threatened Wolfsberg, managed by Steve McClaren, and he went on to play for Bayern, Juventus and Atletico Madrid and be a hit at every single one of those clubs.

 

[sidford]

There's no double draw today I take it? As in they draw the next round as well?

 

[VegasII]

I just posted this tweet because of the photo.

 

[ardiles]

We’ve played Dinamo Zagreb once before, in November 2008.

Our previous Europa game was two weeks earlier, we lost 2-0 to Udinese which culminated in the sacking of Juande Ramos.

It was Harry Redknapp’s first European game in charge, and was the week after we drew 4-4 with Arsenal.

Our team included Gareth Bale and Luka Modric. Theirs included Dejan Lovren and Mario Mandzukic.

We won 4-0, with goals from Huddlestone, and a Darren Bent hat trick.

But that’s because Lovren had not become the world’s best defender yet.

 

[Kingellesar]

Pretty happy with the draw, even more happy that United got Milan. I want Zlatan to smash them.

 

[John48]

No such thing as an easy draw at this stage as Leicester found out last night, but it could have been worse & as long as we take seriously we have every chance of doing well.