Source: PAR
Tottenham Hotspur V Crystal Palace at White Hart Lane : Match Preview
Tottenham Hotspur V Crystal Palace - view commentary, squad, and statistics of the game live.Mauricio Pochettino confident in Tottenham squadMauricio Pochettino believes he has a strong enough squad to cope with a big week at an early stage in Tottenham's season.Having started their Europa League campaign with victory over Qarabag on Thursday night, Spurs host Crystal Palace in the Premier League on Sunday before a Capital One Cup clash with fierce rivals Arsenal and a return to league action at Manchester City.With three big games in the space of six days across two competitions Pochettino's side could lay down a marker for the remainder of the campaign - having not lost since an opening-day defeat at Manchester United.Pochettino is expecting a challenge when he welcomes Alan Pardew's Eagles to White Hart Lane but insists his players can deal with such a tough run."We have a lot of games ahead and we need to be careful with the players," he said."We need to give the players time to recover and manage them in a very good way because we have some problems with some players but we have a big squad, it is not a problem."Palace have improved in different positions and showed it in the last nine or 10 games - they have won eight. They are a very strong team and have improved a lot from last season."Eric Dier, who has been deployed in a defensive midfield role in recent games by Pochettino, echoed his manager's comments and has been impressed by the improvements made by Palace in the last year."They showed signs of what they are capable of when Alan Pardew took over last season," he said."This season they've really kicked on - it will be a tough test. They've got a bit of everything now because they are organised, they defend well but then they also have good attacking players with flair and creativity."It's a cliche but there are no easy games in the Premier League. Last season, people were talking about Palace possibly going down but they are now right at the top end of the table."Look at the likes of Swansea, Everton, Southampton and now Leicester. There are so many good teams that you can't afford to be off the pace in any game. You have to be ready every weekend."Crystal Palace boss Pardew will not curb his side's attacking instincts despite leaking goals at the other end.The Eagles head to Tottenham on Sunday flying high in sixth place, but they have yet to keep a clean sheet this season.However, Pardew has no intention of tightening up at the back at the expense of rattling in the goals at the other end of the pitch."On a professional level, the lack of clean sheets does concern me a little bit but I can still cope with winning 3-2 or 4-3," he said."The bottom line is I want this team to always think about scoring goals. If you are of that mindset then you can't switch to really focusing on a clean sheet."If we'd lost three games on the trot then maybe we'd start focusing on a clean sheet and start building from there, but we have got good momentum and a good feeling. Our players are smiley and happy and we will go out and try to take the game to Spurs."Leicester, another team making an encouraging start to the season, have also yet to manage a shut-out, prompting manager Claudio Ranieri to offer his players a pizza for a clean sheet.But Pardew added: "We're not really at the top of the tree for pizzas in this area here. Although a kebab or a burger might go down well if we keep a clean sheet."I don't want to take the ambition out of the team. The problem when I arrived was that the ambition had gone out of the team. We managed to put that right so I'm not going to take it away now."Clean sheets are important for results. If we'd got one last week against Manchester City we'd have been very pleased and we were a minute away from achieving it."We mustn't dwell on that and we'll try to score two goals at Spurs if we can."Pardew could welcome back Damien Delaney, Joe Ledley and Connor Wickham, who all missed the last-gasp 1-0 defeat by City through injury.However, full-back Joel Ward remains sidelined by a knee injury and forward Marouane Chamakh is out with hamstring trouble.