sacked.
Rubbish like, struggling at home to beat relegation fodder one nil, wasn’t that the reason AVB had to go, to be replaced by Mr Entertainment Tim Sherwood.
Cardiff are gone. They’re down. They haven’t got a goalscorer, second joint lowest goals tally in the league, far less than a goal per game and they have the second worst goals against record.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer isn’t going to be coming on and getting a last second winner to keep them up.
Yet they could have walked away from White Hart Lane on Sunday with at least a point. And frankly if they did it wouldn’t have been completely unmerited. As Spurs put in yet another dispiritingly awful display.
The hallmark of Timmy’s teams since he took over. Again against another side that couldn’t buy a win in their previous league outings – 9 of the 12 teams they’ve face since AVB was sacked were struggling – and yet again Spurs kept giving the ball away, let them have a far easier ride of possession and ended up resorting to aimless humps up the park to the big fella.
Yes under AVB it could be desperately dull as they struggle to breakdown flat back 10s that teams visiting the Lane lined up as. Lot of sideways and backward passing as possession was kept while trying to get through.
That’s changed though as visitors don’t camp out all 10 outfield players on their own 18 yard box. They know they don’t have to any more and while they have the ball there’s no pressure on them to lose it as there was before.
It has to be said Spurs did start quicker than they’ve done in some while. Lennon was played the perfect ball for him. Through the channel between centre-back and fullback to run onto and cross from the byline – meaning he doesn’t have to run into the defender and cut down his own space. Decent cross but at the time I Tweeted that I wondered if we’d see such a ball to him again. We didn’t.
Not long after he did put in another decent cross. The shock of two decent crosses in the space of a few minutes could have been the contributing factor to Soldado completely butchering his header.
Lennon isn’t helped when Naughton is playing at right-back – who is? Naughton seems scared to get forward so there’s little or no overlapping. Both fullbacks on the day looked like a calamity waiting to happen defensively. But then so do both of the starters if everyone is fit and available. Fryers best contribution was to almost get Craig Bellamy sent off. Fryers was hacked down by Ki, who received a deserved yellow card for which Bellamy started gobbing off, as per usual, for which he deservedly got a yellow and was milliseconds away from another, the ref going to his pocket for the red but seemed to have a change of heart.
One bizarre thing about Naughton is he’s now taking set pieces. And even more bizarrely bar the odd one they were mostly decent efforts. Couple of really good corners that could have led to goals, especially one to the front post that was whipped in.
Two Cardiff set pieces within minutes of each other around the half hour mark were at the centre of the final outcome of the game. Firstly a free-kick to Cardiff quickly found it’s way down the other end of the park, Spurs actually managed a number of passes to their own team-mates which ended with Adebayor finding Soldado running into the box with a fine delivery, which the Spaniard thankfully finished off.
Relief for one and all – you could see it all over Soldado’s face – and now we won’t have to put up with the media idiots going on about when he last scored.
Side note, re Soldado. How much is that gormless monkey Martin Keown paid out of the license tax? And why? His expert analysis on Soldado didn’t match up to what the player has been doing since his arrival at the club. Not working? Well somebody shouldn’t be on our dime.
Shortly after it could have been all level. Shouldn’t have been. Again another set piece and Caulker hits the crossbar with a header. Would have been very Spursy to concede minutes later to an ex-player. It shouldn’t have stood though if scored, Lloris was being fouled, so blatantly that the ref should have seen it.
And honestly that’s your lot. Lennon could have had a penalty if he’d been fouled just a little closer to the Cardiff goal. Harry Kane could have finished it off if he kick a ball with his left foot – I know too much to ask a professional footballer in the English top flight.
The rest was aimless huff and puff, hump and lose the ball. You thought Soldado now off the snide would get his second, third, fourth against such useless opposition but that one goal was the only bit of decent service he saw all afternoon.
It was aimless, clueless rubbish. Worse than anything under AVB. But Timmy’s luck could be running out those relegation fodder teams aren’t on the horizon for the next few weeks. Chelsea, than Benfica in the Europa, then the Woolwich scum, Benfica again, Southampton then Liverpool.
Can Timmy’s Pulis / Allardyce tactics get anything out of that?