The interest in this game is so overwhelming that apparently no one even bothered to start a match thread.
Anyway, Sels is out with a minor strain. Murillo, Bakwa, Luiz and Zinchenko all back in training although I don't know if any will be available tomorrow.
Ohhh Sebastian Haller plays for them. West Ham paid (up to) 45M for him just 6 years ago. Sounds like he's had a very mixed time since then.
They’ve all traveled and you have to think they wouldn’t have unless they were at least likely to be on the bench.
One win (or three draws) almost certainly puts us in the knockout stages (the line went through the teams on 10 points last season). Two wins and a draw (maybe just two wins) to avoid the play-off round. If we do have to go through the play-offs I think there's a minor benefit to being top 16 (12/13 points last season) but we ought to fancy ourselves strongly to beat anyone outside the top 8 anyway.
It looks like Utrecht are comfortably the worst team we have left (according to opta, not just based on the current standings).
I'm looking forwards to this one, finding the Europa League really fun this year.
As Simon says Utrecht are not a great team but I have no idea what kind of patched up team we can put out with a vital game vs Spuds to come on Sunday so I'll go for 3-2 and a vital away win to see us over the line.
I am, it's just a shame it's under a bit of a cloud. It would be a lot more fun if we weren't trying to drag ourselves out of Angeshit. Nothing good has ever come out of Australia.
Yeah if we were mid table and just kinda ambling along these nights would be fucking ace. As it is, my mind is worried about Spurs and this feels like a bit of a distraction!
Depends on how much we can get out of the returning players but there's two reasonable teams available, so we shouldn't be that patched up.
Sels/John
Savona/Abbott
Milenkovic/Boly
Murillo/Morato
Williams/Zinchenko
Anderson/Dominguez
Sangare/Luis
Hutchinson/Bakwa
MGW/Mcatee
Ndoye/CHO
Jesus/Kalimuendo
We could play team 1 on Sunday and team 2 tonight.
Spurs are the second best away team in the division, so I'm not overly fussed about Sunday.
This does my head in a little bit. We keep saying “our season wont be defined by games vs Brighton away, Arsenal, Everton, Spurs at home etc…these are free hits” That list gets pretty long, pretty quickly and right now every game is critical.
Margot Robbie?
I’d fancy the IFC against team 2
Let's put it another way, then.
We need one more win to get into the knockout stages.
This is objectively the easiest of the three remaining games (not easy, just easier). Also it's followed by the hardest of the three subsequent games (technically Palace have a better away record than Spurs but I'm not buying that).
So, it makes sense to prioritise tonight's game and take the consequences on Sunday.
Similarly, if it gets to February and we're still in the shit, we'll have to sacrifice the EL knockout games for the league.
These early kick offs are stupid and annoying and unnecessary.
