Adebayor’s not quite on the scale of Bendtner’s 6-foot jump against Spurs when it comes to meeting headers but the man does have a massive leap in his step. Two goals on Saturday and a few more earlier in this season (Villa, Newcastle [not a header but you know] & Spurs) and Manu is proving a real goal threat from crosses. He is tall, but that’s not it; both he and Bendtner make a bigger advantage of their height by learning to jump so high. Ade has revealed why he can jump like that:

“When I was young, I used to suspend a ball from the ceiling in my mum’s house in Togo and see if I could jump high enough to head it. Every time I managed to head it, I would shorten the string attached to the ball and try to leap even higher. I don’t know how high I could go, but ever since I played for Metz in France, I’ve always come first in every jumping test.”

Interesting technique. I thought he was going to say he stands on some invisible midget or that he can actually fly but yeah. I haven’t really noticed his leap until this season but hopefully he’ll give us a few more examples before the season is up. Also in that article he talks about how well his goal scoring run is going and that he’s not really thinking about the golden boot.

Rosicky and Hleb also put in fine performances at Craven Cottage and Le Boss has compared their importance to the team like the partnership of Pires and Ljungberg. Hleb has been fantastic for us this year but Tomas hasn’t been so consistent. He has had some really good games though and Saturday’s was one of his best. The pair are just starting to settle in here and they are proving exiting players.

However the story that really got my attention was Wenger saying we might use some 1st team players against Spurs. This is a massive game and I’ve been worried that it’s going to be too much for our kids. Here’s what he said:

“The players who were on the bench at Fulham will play. But I will have to play one or two who played on Saturday because we are short in numbers.

I will see [about playing Gallas]. Come to the game on Tuesday!”

The players on the bench at Fulham were Lehmann, Hoyte, Diaby, Gilberto and Bendtner. I don’t think Wenger meant Lehmann though as Fabianski has played all the games in the run up to this. The ‘one or two’ that he mentions I think will be Gallas and Hleb or Rosicky, possibly even Cesc. However the inclusion of just those couple of players will make a massive difference, Gallas will keep things tight at the back and the other one would create a lot and just be very useful.

Eduardo’s played a lot in this competition too but I think he’ll be on the bench tomorrow night. He played 90 minutes on Saturday and Walcott was completely rested. I see Da Silva as an option on the bench who can come on if we’re in trouble.

I’m writing up a proper preview tonight for the game so I’ll save my thoughts until then. Thanks for reading.