Tottenham v Villarreal

[Juande the Spurrier]

'Arry is mightily pissed off over the scheduling, ours and the stupid England friendly the week before the season. The latter is ridiculous as everyone says every season. Instead of preparing for City and a CL qualifier the players will be swanning off all over the world. The world cup players have only just got back.

SSN put up this graphic for team travels:

• Everton 25,000 miles
• Blackburn 23,700
• Birmingham 16,500
• Tottenham 13,750
• Man City 12,300
• Bolton 8,700
• Blackpool 900

I assume United have about the same as us and City. Meanwhile Wenger has his side in a training camp in Austria.

[Juande the Spurrier]

So we can add jet-lag in the excuses column. As MT said, the score is not that important. Wasn't the 5-0 win over Roma followed by 2 points from 8 games?

[Magical Trevor]

Not exactly the ideal preparation, is it. Also, not exactly the right way for the FA to try to get the clubs onside in the club vs country debate.

To be honest, we probably shouldn't be flying off to play Benfica next week, it's not like we didn't know this was coming.