‘It’s been impossible to prepare for Real Madrid’ – Tottenham boss Harry Redknapp bemoans build-up to crunch tie

Harry Redknapp, Tottenham Hotspur (Getty Images)

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Harry Redknapp admits it has been impossible to prepare for Tottenham’s Champions League quarter-final clash with Real Madrid due to the international break and mounting injuries.

Spurs currently lie fifth in the Premier League – four points adrift of Manchester City in fourth – and Redknapp believes the weekend’s match with Wigan is just vital as the game with Madrid in midweek.

“We’ve got a few little bits and pieces but it’s an important game for us at the weekend at Wigan,” he told Sky Sports.

“Everybody talks about Real Madrid but Wigan as well is a massive game, you still want to try if we can to make a real push to finish in the top four, so it’s not as if we can suddenly discard the Wigan game and put all our eggs in one basket for Real Madrid. We’ve got to go for both games.

“First and foremost we can’t come out here this morning and start working out how we’re gonna play against Real Madrid because we’ve got to play Wigan on Saturday,” Redknapp continued, “so if I start talking about Real Madrid to them they’ll think “Oh well, we’re not too bothered about Wigan obviously,” but we are very bothered about Wigan, it’s a massive game for us.

“We can’t even think about Real Madrid until we’ve played Wigan. We’ve had Real Madrid watched, Tim Sherwood went out and watched them with Les Ferdinand, they’ll go out again on Saturday night and watch them play, but other than that we haven’t been able to. When do you do anything?

“It’s farcical really – we play Saturday, they’ve got to recover on Sunday…you then travel to Madrid early Monday morning, you’re not gonna walk into the Bernabeu and start working on corners and set plays and shape and anything else because everybody’s going to be looking at you. It’s very very difficult to prepare for Real Madrid because Wigan’s in the way first.”

The Spurs boss bemoaned his growing injury list with William Gallas becoming the latest player to be struck in Tottenham’s defensive crisis. He joins Ledley King, Jonathan Woodgate and Younes Kaboul on sidelines leaving Redknapp short on centre-backs.

He also criticized the timing of the international break by admitting it has given his side little time to focus and prepare for their upcoming challenges.

“To be fair we had two players training all last week. Tom Huddlestone, who was coming back from injury, and Jermaine Jenas. There wasn’t another senior player here.

“How do you prepare for anything? They’ve come back today, it’s Thursday morning now, they’ve come back this morning, five of them played 90 minutes on Tuesday night, William Gallas has gone for a scan this morning, one or two others have got little niggles. It’s a nightmare.

We started with six central defenders here. We’ve lost Ledley King – it looks like he’s going to have an operation that will end his season. Jonathan Woodgate we felt was making progress and he’s done a calf injury in a game the other day against Barnet that we arranged here.

“Younes Kaboul is still out with a thigh strain and William Gallas has been for a scan today with his knee and he’s struggling a little bit for the weekend as well, So out of the six we’re now down to two, we’ve got Michael Dawson and Sebastien Bassong.”