Centre Halves For Spurs Game?

With our opening Premiership fixture less than a week away, the manager certainly has a few concerns over who to play at the heart of our defence. Our three first team centre halves; Carragher, Agger and Skrtel have all picked up knocks during pre-season making them doubts for the curtain raiser against Tottenham.

Now Rafa is confident that Carra will be fit to make the trip but both Agger and Skrtel have faced longer lay offs and neither have, yet, played in the month of August. I doubt either will be match fit for the game at White Hart Lane. Daniel Ayala, Mikel San Jose and Martin Kelly have been tried out in pre-season but do you throw a youngster in for such a difficult game?

We have been linked with Michael Turner from Hull, Sylvain Distin from Portsmouth and Stoke’s Ryan Shawcross to try and bolster up our numbers at the back but time is running out if any of them are to be signed by the time we head south to north-London.

Another defender, Fabio Aurelio, will also be missing the trip to Spurs due to a knee injury.

So where does it leave us? Do we risk an unfit Skrtel or Agger or do we throw a youngster in for the opening game of the season? Other alternatives that have been suggested has been to move Johnson in one and have Stephen Darby at right back.

It’s certainly a headache for the manager.