Spurs preview

Les Reed has apparently chosen to treat tomorrow's match like a home game. It's just a shame that Spurs meanwhile will not be staying in a hotel and treating it like an away game, tucking into some of the chef's special lasagne.

However you can imagine the look on Martin Jol's face when he shows up at 1.30pm and finds our squad sitting in the home dressing room in their suits, casually leafing through the matchday programme.

Hopefully we've all just about recovered from the excitement of Tuesday night, and have been brought back down to earth by the words of Greek philosopher Aristotle (a big Panathinaikos fan incidentally): "One swallow does not make a summer."

Having been brought up in North London, and 'thanks' to having a disproportionate number of Spurs-supporting friends, this particular fixture is always the one I look forward to the most. I've had to endure some friendly banter this week, tempered slightly by the fact that Spurs will be looking at the Premiership table wondering why they haven't taken full advantage of Arsenal and Liverpool's inadequacies by making the third spot their own already, given their admittedly talented squad.

When your opponents have won 6 of 8 home games, and we are still waiting for our first away win for 14 months, it's not surprising that the fixture has 'home win' written all over it (that's 'home' as in Spurs, not Charlton despite Les Reed's honest intentions). Having said that, until last season's capitulation at White Hart Lane, we had not lost there since the 1980s registering three wins in total, and generally having good memories (Chris Powell's bundled winner; Kiely's heroics; 'that' Rufus tackle etc..). Hell, even Carlton Cole scored there.

If I was Les Reed, then I'd be inclined to put Lloyd Sam back on the bench (I'd also think about changing my spectacles for a more fashionable pair, but more about that another time). The reason? Spurs have a genuine aerial threat (Dawson, King, Chimbonda, Huddlestone, Berbatov) and Marcus Bent's presence at defensive set-pieces could be key. I know it sounds a bit like the bad old days when Shaun Bartlett's inclusion seemed only justifiable for the same reason, but I'm feeling awfully conservative this morning. Other than that, the charges from Tuesday night deserve their chance again although it could be a hard-fought 'backs-to-the-wall' job, with any responsibility for creativity falling again squarely on Reid's (square) shoulders.

Pleasingly the game will be shown here live, and in the interests of medical experimentation and progress, I will attempt to draw some interesting conclusions from the regular monitoring of my heartrate and blood pressure during the game, and will report back post-match.

Killer(KillerWatch© -£332) has apparently told his missus that he fancies a 1-1 draw, "Derek darling, you always seem to fancy correct scorelines, but I feel like you don't fancy me anymore." Given that Charlton are 2nd bottom of the Premiership and yet he has never once 'fancied' a Charlton defeat, it is perhaps not surprising that hopsitals all across SE London and Kent are currently missing the dialysis machines they were promised. Anyhow, I cannot share his relative optimism; NY Addick predicts: Spurs 3 (Defoe 2, Berbatov), Charlton 0; Blood Pressure 140/85; HeartRate 106bpm