Tottenham Hotspur FC 2013/14

[EJG1980]

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So happy for Harry, what a moment, brilliant stuff. I'm Really glad that he got to break the record by scoring the winning goal in a really big match in front of the Spurs fans. It would have been special wherever he did it, but with hindsight, I'm glad that he didn't play against Preston in the cup so he was able to break it today.

It was an excellent performance from the team too and a well deserved win. Man City may have had more of the ball but we looked the more dangerous side when attacking; the Mahrez chance in the first half was the only one we got lucky with, otherwise it was just routine stuff for Hugo to deal with. I think I'm right in saying that Haaland didn't have a single shot in the entire match.

Hojbjerg was brilliant today in midfield. I think in games where we have more of the ball he can sometimes be a bit limited, when we need clever passing and quick thinking to break down the opposition, but in big games like today where his "warrior" qualities are needed more, he can be fantastic.

I'd say the same about Emerson Royal at right wingback, he's often not great attacking wise, but he's had a few performances in big games like this (Liverpool away last season, for example) where he's been top notch. Also, a £40 million signing in your position might help inspire you up your game!

Kane, Hojbjerg and Royal joint men of the match today, for me.

A little bit nerve jangling at the end when Romero was sent off, but, despite that, I wouldn't have him change the way he plays. His front foot defending helps us out far more often than it lets us down, and I'm willing to accept the occasional match where he oversteps the mark slightly in return for all the matches where he's the best defender on the pitch.

Speaking of the defence, well done to them for starting to turn around their form. They had definitely dropped off compared to how they were playing at the end of last season, but that's now three clean sheets in a row. Keep it going lads.

Edit: I was hoping the club would post something like this today, all 267 Harry Kane goals (so far!) in one handy video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCvz3fozcdA

...and the interview he did on the pitch after the match had finished:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHjtt4m7Eeg

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Great historic day for Spurs and Spurs fans with HK finally breaking the record and well on the way towards the highest Premiership goal scorer too. Excellent stuff.

Really needed win yesterday too and was deserved on the the chances we had; good all round performances and Hojbjerg definitely a particular standout. But I think they were right on MotD to single out Eric Dier too.

How many times here have I said his best position is in front of the back line as a sweeper and/or the furthest back of a diamond midfield formation, essentially in Paul Scholes type role to name one of the best examples of a player used in that way?

Yesterday he was dropping into the back line to make it a five man wall defence but also pushed up when Spurs were attacking. Best performance I've seen from him in ages. One of the things too that perhaps MC were not expecting and which helped tip the game Spurs' way.

If Leeds can do us a favour and beat or at least draw against MU in the game later this week it'll put that fourth place back in reach for us and on the same number of games played. Unfortunately Newcastle have Bournemouth next as their game in hand but then Liverpool and Brighton. So if we don't blow our games against Leicester, WH and Chelsea we could be right up there again.

[EJG1980]

I watched MOTD on the iPlayer just now, really good analysis of what Eric Dier did in the match yesterday. It's always nice when you get some interesting insight like that on a football show.

I remember there was a period from 2015-2017 ish when Poch used to do a very similar thing with Dier except the other way around: Dier would start in midfield and play most of the game there but would drop back in-between Vertonghen and Alderweireld as a third centre-back at opportune moments.

We haven't won three (league) matches in a row yet this season, so it'd be a very good time to finally do that with a win against Leicester. Then we'd have a nice bit of momentum built up going into the big match in Italy against AC Milan. Who, incidentally, have been in awful form since football restarted after the World Cup, so hopefully we can put them to the sword rather than giving them a pick-me-up!

[EJG1980]

Spurs have posted a nice mini-documentary about Harry Kane on their YouTube channel. Just over 15 minutes long, an enjoyable watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96xI_bYnurE

Less enjoyable is the news that Hugo Lloris injured his ligaments against Man City and is going to be out for 6 to 8 weeks. He hasn't been at his best this season (he's made more errors leading to goals than any other player in the league) but he's still our captain and a massively experienced player.

At least we have Fraser Forster as backup this season, who himself has plenty of Premier League and Champions League experience. It'd have been more of a concern if we'd had to drop down to a young and inexperienced keeper, especially with huge matches against the likes of AC Milan coming up, but Forster has played in those kinds of matches plenty of times. Hopefully he can come in and do a really good job.

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Watched, off and on, the FA Cup Sheffield Utd versus Wrexham replay (3 - 1) and I think Spurs will have to be really on their game against SU.

They play a very good, fast counter attacking game. The one player who I particularly noticed was Anel Ahmedhodzic who scored their first goal. But it was not only that which made me notice him, it is his height: almost 6' 3".

He seems very good at getting on the end of corners and free kicks, heading the ball back into the danger zone. At corners he is clearly a target man the dead ball kick taker is looking to supply. He stands just outside the six yard box or even further away and runs in towards the far post which is where the balls meant for him are aimed.

Because of that height he consistently wins the ball, heading it back towards the penalty spot or into the middle of the melee, very like Peter Crouch used to do.

A dangerous guy who will need watching by the Spurs defence in those circumstances.

[EJG1980]

Wow, I thought we probably wouldn't replicate how well we played against Man City but I wasn't expecting THAT much of a drop off. Comfortably our worst performance of the season, as even when we've played poorly and lost before we haven't been spanked like that. Really disappointing going into the big match away against Milan.

The injuries are piling up too, with Bissouma getting injured yesterday, Sessegnon missing from the squad today, and now possibly Bentancur injured as well. If Bentancur's injury makes him miss the Milan match our only fit / not suspended midfielders for that match will be Skipp and Sarr.

Spurs, just when you think we're building a little bit of momentum...

[Mayhem]

I will readily admit, that is not the result I was expecting from the game…!

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I listened to the Spurs first goal going in and thought: that's great, OK no need to worry. I go back at half-time and Leicester are leading 3 - 1.

I could not believe it.

Appalling result but, just, mitigated by some of the other results of teams behind us in the Premiership, so not as disastrous as it could have been. How can we go from the MC result to this sort of performance in just a week?

[EJG1980]

How can we go from the MC result to this sort of performance in just a week?

Yup, it's been really up and down in terms of results for a while now (with, unfortunately, the downs usually lasting a bit longer than the ups).

We haven't performed to our best for pretty much the whole season, but, at the start we were at least getting consistent results. First ten matches of the season we had 7 wins, 2 draws, 1 loss. 2.3 points per game, nailed on CL qualification and an outside shot at a title challenge if you keep that up for the whole season.

Yet in the past 13 matches we've had: loss, loss, win, loss, win, draw, loss, win, loss, loss, win, win, loss. 5 wins, 1 draw, 7 losses. Down to a measly 1.23 points per game. No consistency, and for every good result we get we often get a couple of bad results.

It was at pretty much this point last season when we found some consistency after a similar couple of results: we'd been on a poor run but got a great win against Man City, but followed it up with a poor loss at relegation zone Burnley. After that we finished the season with a run of 10 wins, 2 draws, 2 losses, playing some fantastic football and putting teams to the sword on a regular basis.

MAYBE the Leicester loss can spark something in the team like the Burnley loss seemed to last season, although circumstances are tougher this time. Last season we were out of Europe and the cups and had no injuries to contend with, it was pretty much one league game each week and no other distractions. This time we've still got the cup, still in Europe, and have a shedload of injuries to contend with.

Fingers crossed they can start getting some consistent wins because, as you said, we're not miles behind the teams we need to catch in the league, top four is still very doable if we can sort ourselves out.

Edit: Uruguayan journalists reporting that Bentancur has torn knee ligaments, minimum of six months out, more likely to be at least nine

Massive blow, I think he’s been our most consistently on form player this season alongside Kane. He’s also the only one in our midfield with a bit of guile and vision, our backups are much more suited to replacing Hojbjerg rather than playing alongside him. Maybe Sarr could have a bit more about him to replicate Bentancur, but I haven’t seen him play enough.

If we’re stuck with two defensive midfielders for the rest of the season (Hojbjerg and Skipp for example) I wouldn’t mind seeing a slight tweak to Conte’s formation; switch from 3-4-3 to 3-4-1-2 with Kulusevski as the one advanced central midfielder / deep forward, with Kane and Son/Richarlison as the front two. Wouldn’t be too far off the formation he often used at Inter.

Although iirc, when Conte very first came in he often did use Hojbjerg and Skipp as the midfield two (until Skipp got injured and missed the rest of the season) in his usual 3-4-3, and we had a decent length undefeated run. Anyway, whatever we end up doing, I hope it works!

Edit 2: injury now confirmed by the club. I was hoping that maybe the journalists had jumped the gun and it wasn't going to be as bad as they were reporting, but no such luck.

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[EJG1980]

1-0 defeat, not the end of the world, and it could have been worse as Milan had a couple of golden opportunities from headers in the second half to increase the lead.

We played okay up until the final third, where we just didn't have the guile to create any clear cut chances. Kane did alright with some of his holdup work and passing, but Son and Kulu both struggled to do anything meaningful when they got the ball. I would have liked to have seen Richarlison and Danjuma come on a bit earlier to try and change the game, around the 60 min mark so they actually had time to get into the game.

I have to say that Skipp and Sarr both did really well though, lots of good tackles and tracking of players, rarely misplaced a pass and usually moved the ball on as quickly as possible up the pitch. Definitely the most positive thing from the match for us, I've always liked Skipp, and Sarr just looks like he has something about him, I think he might turn into a very good player.

All to play for in the second leg, we can definitely still go through, but the attack needs to play much better in the second leg (and hopefully no silly goals given away at the back either).

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I've said this before here that I always prefer the second leg away from home because of the away goals rule but that does not apply to this season's campaign and looks likely not to be changed back in the near future.

So keeping a loss down to one goal away from home in a two leg tie is an OK result. But as we have to score twice, at least, to win anyway there's really no difference in what has to be done attack-wise. We just have to do it.

There is now some margin for error in defence; we can afford to give away a home goal and have the game go into extra time but, again, in such circumstances, we'd will still need to score three. We'd just get 30mins more to do that.

[EJG1980]

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Fortunately it doesn't sound like it's anything too serious, just that he pushed himself to get back to work too quickly. Get well soon, Antonio.

Cristian Stellini has done well when he's had to substitute for Conte so far, a win against Marseille and a win against Manchester City. Let's hope that he can keep his 100% record going for a while!

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Must win against WH to keep in touch of the top four; good result for Fulham (Saturday) puts them too close behind us for my liking and with Newcastle losing to Liverpool, who themselves can still not be ruled out as a top six threat, we should not waste this chance of picking up 3 points.

If Leicester can do us a favour against MU as well it would be the cherry on the cake.

But WH are nearly always a problem for Spurs so I expect getting those 3 points not to be made easy.

[EJG1980]

Fulham winning was definitely the best result though, as Brighton were four points behind us with two games in hand, now it's four with one game in hand so staying ahead of them is back in our own hands. The Newcastle loss was a good result for us too, now we can move into the top four with a win (albeit having played an extra game compared to Newcastle).

So all we have to do to take advantage is... beat West Ham

You're right about them, the weird thing is that no matter how they're playing in general they always seem to be well up for matches against us. I looked through our results against them and the last time we had an easy win against them was late 2015, when we beat them 4-1 (and their 1 was a last minute consolation). A repeat of that today would be most welcome, but I'll take any kind of Spurs victory! Hopefully good Spurs show up.

Edit: Yes! Good win, and probably the most worry free match we’ve had against West Ham for a little while. One chance right near the start for West Ham and one just after we’d gone 1-0 up (although even that was a shot you’d expect Forster to save), but nothing for the keeper to do aside from that. We had most of the ball and did most of the attacking.

First half was okay without making enough clear cut chances, but we stepped it up in the second half, made a number of chances and deservedly won the match. Another excellent display from Emerson Royal, capping it with a lovely goal, he really has stepped it up with the arrival of the competition of Porro. Awesome pass from Hojbjerg in the buildup for the opening goal too. And perhaps Son should keep coming off the bench, he scores every time he does!

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Good to see Son scoring again with an assist from HK to give us a 2 - 0 win. But that first goal was indeed fantastic from start to finish.

Hojbjerg's pass to Ben Davies running into space and the latter's quick pass to Emerson, the pair of them playing more like forwards rather than defenders. Hojbjerg's pass though was a thing of beauty as it had both vision and perfect execution to take out five WH players at once. They were highlighting that on MotD. I also enjoyed the prelude they ran before the highlights with Spurs' fans bemoaning Spurs for being so 'Spursy' this season.

Great result, just what we wanted but a pity Leicester could not reign in MU for us.

Saturday (early edit)

Fulham drawing against Wolves was a useful result for us, now 'all' we have to do is beat Chelsea.

Should also mention that the Sheffield Utd FA Cup game is being televised by the BBC; something to look forward to next week.