Friend or Defoe?

Players have a nasty habit of coming back to haunt their former sides. Also, decent forwards who go a long time without a goal also have a tendency to make up for lost time when they finally grab one. ‘If he gets one, he’ll get a hatful,” is a well-worn cliche trotted out by many a footballing expert. The thing is, it does tend to be true, with confidence being all important to that highly sensitive species - the striker. Enter Jermaine Defoe. The former West Ham favourite fits into both these categories and is best priced at 5/1 with SkyBet to open the scoring in the Spurs-Hammers game on Saturday lunch time.

Tottenham will have had a welcome ten days off by the time they entertain their relegation threatened London rivals. Morale will still be high following the famous two leg triumph over mighty AC Milan. Defoe remained on the bench for that encounter but in his last game he bagged a delightful brace in the 3-3 draw at Wolves. The relief will have been immense for the England striker who had failed to notch a single league goal up to that point all season.

But Defoe is a class act and the emphatic nature of his two strikes at Molineux suggest he should be back to his old self now. To add to his self belief, the diminutive marksman has scored in four of his last six games against West Ham for Spurs. He won’t be popular with the away fans and that opinion will only harden if he breaks the deadlock at 5/1.