By Ian King
Recent form
Tottenham Hotspur, eight time winners of the FA Cup, continue to bewilder and baffle. Their 1-0 win against Liverpool in midweek came straight out of the blue, in a sense a particularly Tottenham thing to do.
Tamworth are currently 16th in the National League – England’s fifth tier and the top division of the non-league game. They’re freshly installed at this level following two successive league titles, the National League North and the Southern League Premier Division Central, over the last two years.
First ever meeting
Obviously, these two have never met before. Tamworth do however have history in the Third Round of the FA Cup. In 2005/06 they beat Bournemouth en route to losing to Stoke City on penalties. The following season they got that far again before losing at home to Norwich City, while in 2011/12 they did it again before losing 2-0 to Everton.
Famously, Spurs were the last non-league club to win the FA Cup, as members of the Southern League all the way back in 1909. They’ve also played non-league opposition at this stage of this competition before. In 2021 they beat Marine 5-0, while in the mid-1990s they played two similar ties in three years; Marlow in 1993 and Altrincham in 1995. Altrincham took them to a replay in 1979, before Spurs won 3-0 in a replay that was switched to Manchester City’s Maine Road.
Key players
Spurs are now missing enough players for their first team to effectively be everyone who’s left standing. It’s difficult to get too precious about resting players when you’ve got ten of them out injured, though this would be a good opportunity for Richarlison to return, should he be fit.
There is little celebrity around the Tamworth dressing room, no names that would be familiar to any beyond avid National League watchers or a handful of supporters of lower division EFL clubs with pretty long memories. Striker Dan Creaney is their top scorer this season, with eight goals in the league.
-Team News
Rodrigo Bentancur is likely to be absent following his injury on Wednesday night. But both Fraser Forster and Richarlison could be available. Having said that, the debut put in by new goalkeeping reinforcement Antonín Kinský on Wednesday night may put paid to any involvement from Forster. There was no indication of fresh injuries in the Tamworth camp from their 1-0 loss at Sutton United in the FA Trophy last weekend.
Prediction
The biggest battle that Spurs face at Tamworth is the unfamiliar. They’ll be on an artificial pitch in front of a crowd of 5,000. It’s a different world to the padded seats of North London. And, well, it’s Spurs, isn’t it? The clown princes of the Premier League; the team most likely to slip on this type of banana skin and land flat on their faces. But we have to be somewhat realistic, here. The gulf is massive and Tamworth aren’t even a particularly strong team at their level of the game. The away side should really run away with this. I’ll say 3-0 Spurs, though it could be more.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
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