Tottenham Hotspur FC 2013/14

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Yes, that was amazing yesterday.

Probably shouldn't say this but it reminded me of the Austrian womens' team in Euros we've just had. They seemed incapable of not trying to play the ball out from the back even when it was blatantly obvious it was unsafe to do so. The commentators were warning about it, anyone watching the game could see it was stupid but they persisted and eventually gave away a goal as a result.

MU should know better than to do that but they were doing exactly the same thing. I felt a, passing, twinge of sympathy for them when that fourth goal went in but it was only passing.

C. Eriksen must have been left wondering if he had made the right choice to go to MU after that result. I'm sure the wages are much better but at this early point in season that's really the only positive.

Chelsea v. Spurs this afternoon - I'll expect us to come away with a point but hope to see Spurs winning of course. If we lose then the manner of doing that will be important; I'll want us to go down fighting. As I said when the fixtures first came out this is an early first big test against a team who we are likely to be competing against us for the CL places at the end of the season.

All the games are important but against those sorts of teams we have to do better than just roll over and accept a loss as being expected.

[EJG1980]

Yes, that was amazing yesterday.

MU should know better than to do that but they were doing exactly the same thing. I felt a, passing, twinge of sympathy for them when that fourth goal went in but it was only passing.

When he was linked with us for a while last summer, I said I would have been happy with Erik ten Hag becoming Spurs manager, his Ajax teams played fantastic football to watch. The question now is can he adapt his tactics to take account of the differences in the league, the differences types of players he has now, etc.., or will he be stubborn and refuse to make any compromises.

Perhaps more importantly, will the higher ups at Man Utd give him time to get used to the league, learn and adapt, or will they have a knee-jerk reaction to a bad start? Very early days, but it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Chelsea v. Spurs this afternoon - I'll expect us to come away with a point but hope to see Spurs winning of course. If we lose then the manner of doing that will be important; I'll want us to go down fighting. As I said when the fixtures first came out this is an early first big test against a team who we are likely to be competing against us for the CL places at the end of the season.

All the games are important but against those sorts of teams we have to do better than just roll over and accept a loss as being expected.

Conte has mentioned stuff like that in the build up to the match, the fact that we played them three times in January last season, lost every match, didn't score a goal, and never really looked like troubling them, and that this time we've got to have a much better performance no matter what the result ends up being.

We've clearly made a lot of progress since the last time we played them, it'd be really nice to rubber stamp that progress with an early season win in a big match. Fingers crossed we play at our best and get the three points!

Edit: a point always feels bigger when you get it with a goal in the final minute of injury time

Everyone was off their game today, especially in the first half. I was thinking that maybe we'd have an advantage with our South Korea tour giving us good recent experience of playing in sweltering conditions, but the whole team looked devoid of energy and lacked spark. Chelsea were the better team in the second half too, but we did at least improve compared to the first half and looked to have a bit more about us.

In the end, it's a point we've got to be happy with, considering the performance. At least we hung in there and gave ourselves a chance of snatching something when we'd been well below out best for large portions of the match, which is a positive, and I'm sure Conte will be going over all the negative aspects with the players and making sure they learn from it and improve in the future.

The antics between the two managers at the end of (and during) the game was fun; nothing wrong with a little bit of spice in football

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Proper London derby that's for sure, great fun.

I think Spurs were 'lucky' with a few of the refereeing decisions but deserved the result.

As for that Romero hair pulling incident.......................Spurs should be fining him for that. It was stupidly unnecessary, he could have been booked or even sent off. Giving away a free kick would have cost us the goal and with it the draw. Dumb behaviour.

[EJG1980]

Fully agreed, I think Romero is a brilliant player and love the fact that he's on the front foot and aggressive when he defends, but the hair-pulling was just plain stupidity. I was quite surprised that the VAR didn't give anything for it, we definitely got away with that one.

I don't think we "got away" with the other main incidents though. When I saw it live during the match I thought that Bentancur had definitely fouled Havertz, but in the post match analysis on Sky Karen Carney and Jamie Carragher both thought he'd just managed to get the slightest touch on the ball that made it a good tackle rather than a foul (and like me, Carragher thought it was a foul until he saw the multiple post match replays).

With the Richarlison offside, Souness said he could see why they didn't give it, but personally thought it should have been called offside. Carragher was the opposite and could see why they would say it was offside, but personally thought it was right to give the goal. A 50/50 situation where I don't think you can complain too much whatever way the decision goes.

So, first goal I think was fine, second goal we were lucky that that it wasn't given and that Romero stayed on the pitch.

[EJG1980]

Another new player through the door:

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Going straight back on loan to Udinese though, so we won't see anything of him this season.

Serie A is the main football I watch outside the Premier League and I've seen him play a few times, really exciting young player, but very raw as you'd expect for a 19 year old. Bags of potential to be really good though, and even last season he managed to get 5 goals which was excellent for his age and position.

He's a left wingback so this looks like succession planning for when/if Perisic leaves at the end of his current two year contract. You'd hope that learning from Perisic will really help Sessegnon progress (and I love the fact that in both matches so far this season, pre-match and during drinks breaks, Perisic can always be seen talking to Sessegnon, giving him advice) and Udogie will come in to be Sessegnon's backup/competition.

[EJG1980]

Today is the 10 year anniversary of Harry Kane's Premier League debut, and the club has a nice interactive(ish) article about it on the club website:

https://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/2022/august/harry-kane-10-years-in-the-premier-league-a-special-feature/

There's a YouTube vid as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkiZN7m9Gck

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Solid, if unspectacular win today against Wolves by the sound of it.

Back to the top of the Premiership, at least for now.

[EJG1980]

Yup, not a match anybody will remember by the end of the season but three points is three points. Bleh first half, Wolves were better and had some good chances, one header that just crept past the post.

A decent improvement but still below our best in the second half, but we hit the woodwork twice and passed up some other good situations, so I think we deserved the win as we took our chance when we were the better team and Wolves didn't. Tight bugger of a match though.

That's a Perisic assist for a Kane goal two matches running now. 250th Spurs goal for Kane, 185th Premier League goal for Kane, and the 1,000th Spurs goal at home in the Premier League. Kane is up to 4th in the all time Premier League top scorers (1 ahead of Aguero and 2 behind Andy Cole) and is now the highest PL scorer with all his goals for one club (again, 1 ahead of Aguero).

[EJG1980]

Interesting draw for the Champions League group stage, pretty much straight down the middle in terms of team strength: none of the giants but no whipping boys either.

A group you'd hope we would qualify from but definitely no teams in there we can take lightly. All those teams have fanatical home support so the away matches especially will be tough.

Good group in terms of travel too, no matches in any of the far flung reaches of Europe.

[EJG1980]

Another tough match today, but another three points. It's the theme of the season so far, we haven't really got going properly and played our best football yet, but we're still doing what's needed to get results.

We got into quite a lot of good positions (especially in the second half) but the final shot or pass wouldn't be the right quality, or one of the players would take a bit too long to make a decision and lose the ball. We passed up a number of good situations that would have allowed us to kill off the game much sooner.

I know it's a bit of a marmite statistic, but the expected goals stat today told the story: Forest 0.90 Spurs 2.57. Forest played some lovely stuff, but the main thing they lacked was arriving in more clear cut positions to score at the end of their nice build up play.

Still, there were a couple of "eek" moments when we were one goal ahead that could have changed the match on a different day, but in general our defence dealt with most situations well and kept Forest at arms length.

It's good to have them back in the top flight though and they're great to watch, I hope they stay up. Steve Cooper looks to be a really good manager, whether it was at Swansea or now at Forest, I've always enjoyed matches with his teams involved.

Edit: Son had another off day today, and with Richarlison doing really well again when he came on, I wonder if Richy might get the nod to start against West Ham. We're gonna have to start rotating soon anyway with all the games coming up.

The second goal today was all down to him: running down a lost cause, outmuscling the defender to win the ball back, and then then sending a beautiful outside of the boot cross right onto Kane’s head. Great stuff.

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Yes Richarlison recovering the ball and getting in that sweet cross even HK couldn't complain about was the highlight for me.

If you watched HK just before that when Sessegnon didn't pass to him at the right time and had lost the ball he was clearly very annoyed and frustrated. When he finally glanced up and saw Richarlison had the ball he suddenly got his game face back on and barely had to move to be in the right position for heading in the cross. All smiles again.

[EJG1980]

A bit of a mixed bag in the match last night. Fairly decent first half where, apart from West Ham having a 5-6 min spell on top after VAR overturned the penalty against them, we were in control and deservedly took the lead.

Second half started okay with West Ham not really looking threatening, but then we had a poor clearance from Lloris and the defence not paying attention from their quick throw and all of a sudden it was 1-1. Our response to that was actually good, we kept the ball well and didn't allow them to build on the momentum of the goal at all, and for about ten minutes it looked like we were the ones who were going to overcome the setback and retake the lead.

But for some reason that tailed off and then West Ham got on top for the remainder of the match, and there were two or three heart in mouth moments where it looked like West Ham would take the lead. Thankfully we managed to not concede and in the end I was happy with the point, I think the draw was a fair result overall, but we'll be the more disappointed for taking the lead and then not building on it.

Not a terrible result though and we keep our unbeaten start to the season going, having already played what are traditionally two of our toughest away matches. Hopefully we get back to winning ways against Fulham at the weekend, although that'll be no walk in the park, they've looked a decent side so far this season.

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Those defensive errors yesterday made me want to tear my hair out, if I had much to spare left.

WH did that thing they seem to do against us too often: make us play badly. Next time we'll probably beat them 3-0 but this time a draw was an almost welcome result.

We did not lose, still in third place and Arsenal at the top remain in reach. But we do need the three points from the Fulham game.

[EJG1980]

Good win today, well deserved, the only thing missing was better finishing to make it more comfortable. It was still good to see us creating so many chances though, it was a performance that was closer to the really great performances we were putting in in the last couple of months of last season. A bit nervy at the end after Mitrovic's (brilliant) goal, but loads of positives and a really good performance.

Did a little bit of rotation with Richarlison and Lenglet both getting their first starts. A good composed game from Lenglet, slotted in really well, although he will have much sterner tests than today defensively. His passing is very good; it's noticeable that when Romero is in the team our build up from the back is much better, and I think Lenglet adds that on the left hand side too. Very promising.

Richarlison was excellent, had a great game and was so unlucky not to add a goal to his assist, really made a very strong case to keep his place in the starting eleven.

Edit: found a nice little compilation of Richarlison from yesterday's match.

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It's great to have a bit of competition up front, and more importantly, the ability to rotate and keep players fresh. It'll be interesting to see who starts up front against Marseille. Kulu was the one to get a breather today, so Son or Kane to get a bit of bench time on Wednesday? Or does Conte go with the tried and tested Son, Kane, Kulu front three for our first CL match? Nice problems for him to have.

[fallenangle]

Good win but should have been more comfortable. Anyway the result was just what was wanted keeping us in touch with the top of the table.

I'm hoping that MU will do us a favour and get a draw out of the Arsenal game today but at this point I wouldn't be upset about MU winning. However as I thought might be the case the dismissal of MU as potential top four contenders, due to some (truly) lousy performances, is looking to be premature. They're on the same points as Liverpool with today's match in hand. A win could put them into fifth place two points ahead of Chelsea.

As said, Richarlison indeed had a very good game.

Looks like we were right to be enthusiastic about Spurs buying him. As hoped, being surrounded by other good forwards and not having that constant weight of expectation as the primary striker as at Everton he's blossoming into the player he's always promised to be.