Match Preview: Spurs at Villa Park and win a t-shirt

I'm adding categories as I go here, because it is still a new site, even though it's not really, but I guess you know what I mean and you might not notice this straight away, but I'm changing the format of this type of post to a preview instead of a prediction, mostly because me predicting wins every week got sort of old.

So, the first preview post sees us up against Spurs at home and Marky Mark is predicting a home win, which I'm not sure is good or bad, but I'll take it, he's had a good run recently.

The thing with Spurs is, they've got a very good squad of players and while they might not be desperate for points any more, they're playing better football and they're going to fancy they can get something against us. They could also move up to ninth place if they beat us and a good run could see them finish a lot better than most would have thought after the terrible start they had.

We beat them earlier this season 2-1 and Martin O'Neill has never lost to Spurs as Villa manager at Villa Park. I know it's only his third season so maybe not very impressive, but it all counts.

The thing is though, Spurs are now managed by Harry Redknapp and Martin O'Neill hasn't got the best record against him at Villa Park. My memory might be a little off here, but I don't think he's beaten Harry Redknapp at Villa Park and that is mostly because of how Harry has his teams come out to play.

A Redknapp team isn't so different to Martin O'Neill team. All of his teams fight for everything and I have no doubt that the match on Sunday is going to be a battle that comes down to who wants it more and who is better prepared.

I mention better prepared because Spurs played last weekend and we didn't. The trip to Dubai is going to be make or break for us this season, in so much that it either helped or it didn't and based on our current form, we needed help.

We have ten games left and I'm going to put my head on the block and say that we can't afford to drop any more than six points if we want to finish in the top four. There is also every chance we could go into this game sitting fifth as Arsenal have Blackburn at home on Saturday and they'll be doing everything to get three points.

We can hope that Arsenal are tired, but Blackburn also played last night, so even if they are, you've got to fancy that the quality they have in the team will see them get three points, so it really is in our hands and we can't just hope for results to go our way, not with over a quarter of the season remaining.

We need to beat Spurs to keep the pressure on Arsenal. If we lose, the pressure is all on us and I'm not sure how the players will handle that. I'm hoping Dubai has done the trick, but we'll find out for sure on Sunday.

So, there is no prediction, instead, I'm going to ask you to predict and whoever gets it right will get entered into a competition to win one of three t-shirts from SoccerPrint. You gotta be in it to win, so predict below.

Oh, we will also be doing a live text for this match too, starting at about 1pm on Sunday here and on Twitter!