Football: Graham needs Ginola to meet the German challenge
Uefa Cup Second round second leg: Tottenham
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Your support makes all the difference.TOTTENHAM NEED the real David Ginola to stand up - and preferably to stay on his feet - if they are to reach the Uefa Cup third round in Kaiserslautern tonight.
The Frenchman was an inspirational figure as Spurs achieved a 1-0 lead in the first leg last Thursday, though the Germans accused him of diving to win a penalty that Steffen Iversen converted for the only goal.
On Sunday, however, Ginola did not appear to relish the battle at Sunderland and was substituted at half-time with Spurs 2-0 down. Another Iversen goal, his fifth in five starts, was not enough to save them and George Graham is demanding greater application this evening. "It's very rare that I can say I was disappointed with my team," he said. Despite 21 clean sheets in 60 games since he took over 14 months ago, Graham also wants the security of at least one extra goal tonight, rather than relying on a defence badly exposed at the Stadium of Light. "I want to see us go forward and be positive," he added. "They know they have to come at us but we'll see it through."
If Spurs do not inspire quite the same confidence as Arsenal away from home and have not played in Europe for seven seasons, it is reassuring for them to have all the manager's experience of meeting continental challenges behind them. In a little dig at his former club's failures in European competition since he left Highbury, Graham said yesterday: "I want this to be a learning process but a winning one."
Kaiserslautern, who were well supported at White Hart Lane, have already promised Graham's team a hot reception in their industrial heartland at the Fritz Walter Stadium, named after the local hero who captained Germany's World Cup-winning team of 1954. Jurgen Klinsmann, who made his Bundesliga debut there for Stuttgart, has warned his former Tottenham colleagues: "The people are hardworking and expect the same from their team. They want to see the team fight and strive and anything less than 100 per cent is just not acceptable." A good 1-0 away win at Stuttgart on Sunday pushed Kaiserslautern up to ninth place and confirmed their improvement after a fraught start to the season.
They will be all the more confident if Youri Djorkaeff, a World Cup winner with France, is fit to return from the injury which forced him out of the first game.
Tottenham ought, however, to be capable of picking up an away goal and of preventing the Germans scoring the three they would then require. It would hardly do, after all, to be knocked out of the competition before Arsenal have even entered it.
Tottenham Hotspur (probable): Walker; Carr, Campbell, Perry, Taricco; Nielsen (or Fox), Freund, Sherwood, Leonhardsen, Ginola; Iversen.
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