North London.
When Jose is trying to hide his fear it brings out every trait that makes loathing him so easy. The bleating, whinging, complaining, hypocrisy, pathetic childishness, blaming of others and attempts at obfuscating his own role in his team’s failure.
Before hand he was talking about Spurs being “challengers” because of spending in the transfer window. Something of course he’s never done. Never spent a penny on a player.
Afterwards it’s always someone else’s fault. This time Jan Vertonghen. One of those despicable foreigner types.
In between was a classic game of two halves. Though in reality it wasn’t quite with one side showing more in the final few minutes of their half. For Spurs thing weren’t helped by some of AVB’s choices. First up again there was Naughton at left-back. It’s not working Andre, it never has and it never will. The kid looks a third rate right-back on his wrong side he’s even worse. No matter what you think about Benny’s attitude and yes he could have his flighty moments he’d have been far better for Spurs on the left than at QPR.
Chelski didn’t have enough possession in that first part of that first 45 to punish Naughton’s inadequacies. The midfield were all over the visitors, wide men were buzzing. Townsend had cut out the aimless shots at nowhere for a more inclusive game, though saying that yet again Soldado just didn’t get the service his movement and work deserves.
Twenty minutes in when Spurs opened the scoring. Nice initial work from Demeble, shielding the ball as he does so well, finds Eriksen who easily escapes Lumpalard, not the best of balls to Soldado which puts the striker off balance but he still does enough to put it into the path of the yet again onrushing Sigurdsson. He’s been doing that all season and yet again it resulted in a goal.
Later in the half the lead could have been extended, when after some good work by Townsend, Eriksen’s excellent cross across the face of the goal was cut out by Ivanovic just before Paulinho would have put it away. Of course the Cheatski defender did this by pulling the Spurs player back in the process. Foul. Penalty. Funny how Jose never mentioned this when having his post-match rant.
Then again just before the end of the first half Paulinho hit the post after another good run and pass from Townsend. Soldado was well placed for a cutback and that sums up his game pretty much.
Chelski were more in the game by now and had been for the last few minutes of that half. But if the ref had done his job, Spurs would have been two up – Soldado would have put away the pen – and they would have been down to 10 men.
Jose made his half-time change bringing on Mata. The little Spaniard’s part in their second half revival one of the main reasons for Mourinho’s post-match outburst. Classic Jose, deflect attention away from the fact that you got it wrong and had to get the player you tried to belittle and humiliate to drag your arse out of the fire.
Also distract the media that hang on his every word, away from that, and that a lot of the second half tactics was long balls to the big striker. Which brought the target of Jose’s whinges. Due to them targeting the Spurs’ left – Naughton – Vertonghen was doing a lot of covering for his fullback. Leading to altercations with Torres. First just after the break when together chasing down a ball that was going out a spiteful little clip of Vertonghen’s heel saw the Belgian stumble to the ground. Jan didn’t like it and told the Spaniard so to which Torres tried to start a cat fight. Clawing Vertonghen’s face in a pathetic manner.
You wonder if it’s something Jose taught him in training. Though his manager might not be too happy, because he surely told him to go for the eyes.
Before their final meeting Vertonghen played his part in the equaliser. Hacking down Ramires. From that the chief scumbag scores after quite easily evading Dawson. In between all of it Lloris was doing a great job of smothering every attack that got near him.
He was having to do this because the visitors were on top. It was screaming out for AVB to bring on Sandro to clamp down on their midfield. But The Beast never made it onto the pitch. Instead it was Chadli for Townsend then Holtby for Eriksen and finally Defoe for Soldado. The middle of the changes being the only one that made sense at the time and that should probably have come ten minutes earlier.
Then there was the final meeting of Vertonghen and Torres. Both going up for the ball, a 50/50, no player fouled. But the ref saw it different and at first viewing at full speed so did everyone else. Jose complains that Vertonghen got his man sent off by staying down and looks to be telling his player he should have stayed down – he didn’t complain about his two English players faking injuries to waste time near the end. Trying to make out that Jan is villain of the piece to as said deflect from Mata’s performance and the fact that retrospective action should now take place and Torres should be banned for a further three games for what should have been a straight red card earlier.
With the one match advantage Spurs couldn’t take the ultimate advantage. Sigurdsson coming closest with a shot that just curled away from the top corner. It’s probably a good thing the red card came when it did, Spurs were on the ropes.
So with a game of two halves many saying the draw was the fair result. But when they should have had a player sent off before they got into the game and another just after the break and a Spurs penalty from the first incident what’s fair?