desire to win.
Timmy said that teams will fear playing Spurs and the draw with Benfica that knocked them out of the Europa League showed the team are fully behind him.
Tim obviously didn’t watch the first 78 minutes of the last 16 second leg tie in Lisbon. Maybe being up in the directors box he was too far away to actually see what was going on. It certainly wasn’t down to his vision being blocked as nobody was sat anywhere close to him.
But then shouldn’t he know how the team played during that first hour and a quarter, surely they played how he’d coached them to play.
Needing at least three goals, against a team that were changed from the previous leg, Timmy’s side decided not press Benfica at all in their half, only putting in a half hearted effort once the halfway line had been crossed. So knowing they really didn’t have to do much the hosts passed the ball around their back four, didn’t cross the whitewash and watched the clock tick down.
Even with Spurs being reduced to a back four of Naughton, Fryers, Sandro and Rose they didn’t attack with any real urgency.
While Fryers and Sandro had their dodgy moments they covered reasonably well but the two fullbacks were again a void. Both pretty clueless. Naughton again was getting praise, this does seem to be well he didn’t have a major screw up so… praise. Defensively very little to do, like at the weekend, while going forward I lost count of the number of times he stopped a break in it’s path. Space to attack but no stop look around and either pass back or launch yet another hopeless diagonal into the box.
That’s not a great performance. He wasn’t helped by the captain on the night. Lennon. I’ve defended Lennon in here for, well, years now. But it’s getting difficult. Yes he doesn’t get the delivery, through the channel to run onto, but a major reason for that is he isn’t in the right place. Time and again with space out on the right he was inside stood next to a defender. A complete waste. One decent run and half cross, one good cross, isn’t much to show for 90 minutes, while easily being bypassed for the Benfica goal.
On the other side Townsend was running into cul-de-sacs. I know Andros why do you stop in full flow, turn inside and run into a defender. It hasn’t worked the last 50 times, this time you might get lucky.
Up front Soldado was getting no service, no change there then, and when he did he was making a hash of things. Everything that goal he scored against Cardiff brought has been destroyed by Sherwood giving him a few minutes here and there since.
Atlético sell Costa in the summer buy Soldado, he scores a bundle in the Champions League next season. It’s the Spurs way.
Bentaleb, now as probably said here before I don’t rate him as highly as the Sherwood fanboys nor do I rate him as lowly as most of the Sherwood haters. He’s a mixed bag, some good defensive work, some decent balls played. But he does drop off, leave players running past him and he does a lot of sideways dithering passes.
Even when they went a goal down on the night, 4-1 on aggregate, there was no change from Spurs. What wasn’t working before wasn’t working after.
It took until it was too late you’d think for any real life to injected. When Soldado and then Townsend were replaced by Kane and Eriksen. Eriksen, though not as brilliant as some would have you believe, did bring some life to the middle of the park. Kane wasn’t that brilliant either but provided a target and played his part with two assists.
Looks through past Tweets. All supportive of Chadli. Looks smug.
Chadli is one of those players very quickly tagged a waste of money by so many. Well £7m for a Belgian international forward never looked like it was going to be money wasted to me. A first season in England a completely new type of football, out of position really and interrupted by injury is also no indicator of what value the player is going to be.
Wasn’t clown Sherwood going to offload him to Swansea in January?
He was the real bright spark of the evening. Creating chances for others and having them himself, which of course he should have done better with. Then with the game pretty much gone a flick on from Kane and Chadli runs onto the edge of the box and slams in the equaliser.
Benfica then entered a stage where they were just like Spurs when they’ve just conceded a late goal. Panic stations.
Moments later Lennon actually got a forward ball from Naughton, Kane nodded down the cross – Lennon’s good one – and Chadli swept home the second. Both goals taken with the confidence you wish Soldado had.
Proper panic stations now. But at this point when time really was ticking down, Spurs reverted back to dropping off and letting them have the ball in their own half with no pressure.
Chances came, the half cross from Lennon, then Kane bundled over in the penalty area. Could have been a penalty, the unnatural angle Kane’s right leg shot out at probably giving the ref the chance he wanted to wave away the claims. Would it have been given the other end? Well moments later one was. Before that Chadli’s diagonal had seen Sigurdsson’s header rebound off the post.
Sandro’s foul finished it off but in reality it was done and dusted before the final kick of the match made it 2-2 on the night and 5-3 on aggregate.
All that was left was for Sherwood to bring the club into disrepute with his ridiculous post match statements.
Jorge Jesus may have looked flustered but he’s going to in the quarter finals while Timmy has seen his side exit yet another competition under his stewardship. His team didn’t really play, Tim’s did for a less than a quarter of an hour and now they’re unbeatable and his the master of man management because it showed they were fully behind him.
And he believes it.