luck.
Two games on the trot and she’s been ridden hard by Spurs, two games with banana skin written all over them. What’s going on?
So to start off the luck didn’t start on the sixth minute, Davies trapped the ball with his arm, trapped it better than he probably would have done with his foot. Yes it might not have been given but it should have. Cracking penalty by van der Vaart, no saving that.
Then a minute later the second pen, you stick your leg out like that in the path of a man on the move you deserve to concede a pen. Again a great pen by the Dutchman but of course Clattenburg had to get involved and spoil it. Retake, encroachment, as many blue shirts in there as white and if you’re going to do it then why not for every pen, not like it had any effect on the outcome. Third pen, not so cracking, from the man himself…
First penalty was great. 2x touch is good but the third you should be as sharp as the first. That ball, they have not found… translated from this Tweet
An end to end first half, some decent fluid play from Spurs but suffering from a touch of Jenasitus.
But it should have been a three goal lead at half-time, missed penalty, plus a great goal by Defoe. Nice roll out by Gomes into Assou-Ekotto’s path, he ran straight down the park, nice jink to get past a Bolton player, good ball over to van der Vaart, who took the ball down and put an excellent cross straight onto Defoe’s head. A brilliant counter attacking goal. No, linesman is waiving his flag and yet again Defoe is offside, he was never on the pillock.
Might have been four as yet another penalty was signalled near the end of the half, but yet again an offside flag was being waved with vigour. Correctly again, this time it was Crouch.
Second half and van der Vaart hasn’t appeared. Pienaar isn’t exactly a like for like replacement. Things weren’t so fluid after the break and of course paid the price for that and not increasing their lead. Some slack play in the middle of the park, poor touch by Dawson and Sturridge is all on his lonesome to have a crack, which for some unexplainable reason Gomes decided to let through him.
One piece of luck from the start was Bolton not playing Chung-Yong Lee fro the off, it was no coincidence that after a good run Bolton dropped off while he was away on international duty with South Korea in the Asian Cup. After he was brought on after 68 minutes there was an incident that I can’t work out if it was good or bad luck. Jenas went through the Korean with a very poor high footed challenge, he probably should have been shown a straight red card, he was only given a yellow in the end. So losing him and playing with 10 men for the rest of the game versus him being banned for the next 3, tough call. His free kick made no difference, after all it was only good enough to hit the woodwork.
Before that was the real piece of luck as Cahill weaved into the box and was tripped by a stupid foot out from Pienaar, probably even more of a stonewaller than Spurs second. Somehow Callentburg really screwed it up and instead adding insult to injury booked the Bolton player for diving.
So with the clock showing the second minute off added time it was left to two forgotten men to win it. Pav laying off to Krancjar, who slammed a cracker from just outside the D. Hopefully it’ll give the Croatian the lift to see him back to the form he showed when he first arrived before spending the best part of a year on the bench.
Fighting performance, minus Bale, Modric, van der Vaart for 45, misfiring strikers and three points picked up but what was the biggest cheer for on the day, was it when the score from a certain game in Newcastle was flashed up?