60 seconds on Monaco | Andy Brassell, European football expert | OneFootball

One of the voices of European football on talkSPORT and Sky Sports, well known for The Football Ramble podcast, an author and writer for The Guardian - and a regular contributor here at Spurs for almost 10 years - Andy Brassell will give his view on our UEFA Champions League opponents as part of our '60 seconds on...' pre-match feature this season.

Next up, it's MD3 and a trip to Monte Carlo to take on Ligue 1 side AS Monaco at Stade Louis II on Wednesday evening (8pm UK).

@andybrassell

Hutter out, Pocognoli in

Andy: “AS Monaco have just changed coaches. Adi Hutter generally did an okay job but, at Monaco, pressure is significant. If you think of the amount of money that goes into the club, it's a club that don't get big crowds, but there is big pressure behind the scenes to get it right. Hutter has been replaced by Sebastien Pocognoli, who did a great job at Union Saint-Gilloise in Belgium. He’s royalty there for winning the title last season for the first time in well over half a century - and getting a team like Union to win the Belgian league is an amazing achievement. Now he's gone over to Monaco and he’s not got a massive amount of top-level experience outside Union, because he's still quite a young guy and, as we said before, there's a lot of pressure to get things right at Monaco. So, he needs to make a good fist of things in the Champions League - this game against Tottenham is absolutely a big deal.”

So far this season…

Andy: “It's been tricky in Ligue 1 so far for Monaco. There is expectation because they're well-funded, because they are a team that's always at the top, and particularly with the current situation in France where only PSG and, to a lesser extent, Marseille, went out and spent some money this season. They're expected to make it into the Champions League, and they're expected to make a dent in the Champions League. Of course, last season they beat Barcelona in the first game, even though Barcelona went down to 10 men after 10 minutes. A lot is expected of them.”

Experience in…

Andy: “Now, what Monaco did this summer was to bring in some experienced guys, I guess, to try and help the younger players who they're trying to develop. Eric Dier - who obviously is absolutely heartbreakingly injured and won't be able to play in this game - Paul Pogba, who's still not fit after his long absence to play and Ansu Fati, who's had a lot of injury problems, a younger player but a player of status. It was a risk, I think, going out and getting those players who were either a bit older or had fitness or absence issues recently. It's felt that Pogba has been quite hit off the pitch. He's been good at being in the dressing room more and passing on his experience to younger players. Ansu Fati has started better than many expected, five goals already, although three of those are penalties and he would be expected to play in this game. He's the only forward player who's been scoring in any sort of volume. Dier, who has been a huge hit - they've loved him on and off the pitch - unfortunately, he'll be absent for this game, but obviously I don't think that should be taken necessarily as a sign of his success or not.”

Front and back...

Andy: “As I mentioned, Fati is leading scorer and Monaco have bought some expensive forwards in recent years, two who used to be attached to Arsenal, of course, including Folarin Balogun, who scored at the weekend in a 1-1 draw Angers, and he had a lot of fitness issues, particularly with his shoulder, last season. He is now back, scored a good goal at the weekend and maybe he will start instead of Mika Biereth, who started brilliantly when he arrived mid-season from Sturm Graz last year, but he's really struggled at the start of the season, one goal in seven starts in the league so far, which isn't great, even though his game is about a little bit more than that.  In terms of the goalkeeper, they had a lot of problems switching between two goalkeepers last season. You've got Lukas Hradecky from Leverkusen, and he's been injured for the last couple of weeks. So, they've had to bring Philipp Köhn back in goal, who didn't have unanimous approval, it's fair to say, last season and was replaced as first choice a bit into last season. There's talent in this Monaco team. It's not as solid as some of the best or even some of the recent teams, so it's difficult to know what you're really going to get from them. They're going to lean a lot on Fati for goals. As we said, he's had a pretty good start in pure statistical terms. Maghnes Akliouche on the right-hand side, cuts in onto his left, he was of interest to PSG, but they weren't prepared to go the full way for him because Monaco wanted £70 million-odd for him in the summer. So, that couldn't really happen. I guess the current state of the transfer market has enabled them to hang on to Akliouche, which is a bonus for them.”

Tough start for Monaco at Stade Louis II...

Andy: “I think it's tough for Monaco that the fixture computer has ended up with them playing Manchester City and Tottenham in back-to-back home games, two very difficult home games to get something out of, even though, obviously, they got a draw against Manchester City. Having said that, Monaco are very much second favourites in this, for me. It's difficult to know what to predict because they went to one of the weakest teams in the league over the weekend, Angers, and had a bad first half, seemed as if they got it out of their system and took the lead through Balogun and then gave it up in the end. There are a lot of question marks for Pocognoli and a lot of pressure on him to get things right immediately, even though he's relatively inexperienced and relatively young. As I said, the result of this one, for Monaco, is a big deal.”

Last time we met - 2016