visit White Hart Lane.
Two teams rocked up to play Spurs this week both needing a lift in fortunes Newcastle left with a reinvigorated season Brighton left being out of the League Cup.
Didn’t get round to posting about the Newcastle game earlier in the week, had better things to do, pick me feet, stab my eyes out, listen to Russell Brand.
By christ wasn’t that damn well Spurs in a nutshell. Yet another crap team or one in the relegation zone rocks up to White Hart Lane and rocks away with three valuable points and a boost.
Liverpool are pretty crap, easy win three points – even made Balotelli look good. West Brom, crap, bottom of the league with no wins to their name, walk away with three points and now their mid-table. Newcastle bottom three, no confidence, batter in the first half, should have been dead and buried by the time the second half whistle went but weren’t and not only that were in reality the only team that was going to win 7 seconds after that whistle went.
Much wailing went on before as hat-trick hero Harry Kane was benched. It’s not that Kane was dropped really it’s the fact Adebayor was picked that should have been the grumbling point. Again the loathsome, lazy, dolt lumbered around and did bugger all. Oh yes he scored but even he couldn’t miss from that range, a nice clipped cross by Mason right on his dim head. Ironically it all started from Adebayor’s inept first touch.
Soldado had a good run out against Citeh the week before, showing how he links up better with the three behind him, Kane scored the midweek goals but Adebayor who had barely racked up a shot over the previous few games gets the start. Bar his header he didn’t have one attempt during the game.
AVB was sacked for not picking Adebayor. Sherwood was given the job because he’d play Adebayor. Why is Pochettino playing Adebayor?
Adebayor gets away with it due to the bad defending that let in the two goals. Dier getting all the blame. He looked jaded out there but the talking up of Walker was ridiculous. Yes Dier was lazy back out after the break and lazy getting back for the winner but Walker is lazy when he’s constantly having the ball easily taken off him as he tries to shield it out of play for 20 yards. How many times is Walker mugged while he’s trying to defend with his arse?
What was funny was hearing Danny Murphy telling us how the introduction of Lennon would change all this. Lennon came on and changed absolutely nothing. But Danny seemingly wanted rid of a foreigner on the pitch and an English player brought on. Much like he seemingly wanted a foreign manager out of the Spurs job. Apparently Pochettino did nothing at Southampton and didn’t deserve the job. No doubt Sherwood did, after all he’s achieved.
Funnily enough come the arrival of Brighton – just outside the relegation places in the Championship – for the League Cup, Lennon started the game quite brightly, though why he started on the left is anyone’s guess.
Pochettino stated that the pitch is too small at The Lane and that causes Spurs problems. It probably is too small but you can’t use it as an excuse when you don’t even use the space available to you. Lennon on the left, Townsend on the right is never going to see the full width in play.
Hell it was a shock when Townsend actually made it to the byline and cut the ball back to a Spurs’ player. As much of a shock as when I noticed it had taken him a full 12 minutes before his first inept long shot. Even more amazement that it took another 17 minutes before his second.
The fact that the hash tag #ThingsBetterThanTownsendsShots started trend wasn’t such a surprise. This Tweet summed things up…
Kane. Townsend. And it breaks down for Tottenham.
Dembele. Townsend. And it breaks down for Tottenham.
I see a pattern.— YiddenAgenda (@YiddenAgenda) October 29, 2014
Soldado did start and again he was the one providing the balls that you wish he could just once be on the end of. If he was then maybe they’d have gone in, instead of the stalemate we had going into the break. A dullard of a 45 minutes.
Lennon’s brightness had faded, especially when he topped it off by booting the ball sideways for what would have been a throw-in when it would have been easier to hit the target. Injured, he departed, for Lamela to eventually take the field. Ten minutes later he was on the end of Soldado’s cracking ball, after a nice one-two between the pair, to open the scoring.
Twenty minutes of next to nothing and it was all over as Townsend’s cross was prodded towards goal by Soldado the save being knocked in by Kane.
The Brighton manager might whinge about a couple of penalty shouts, Naughton’s handball, Fazio’s trip but Soldado was clipped in the box and nothing was given – thought Clattenberk might have wanted to be the centre of attention but chose not to, has he learned a lesson?
And so onto Newcastle in the next round. Typical that. Also typical that next up in the league is Villa, haven’t won in five league games during which they haven’t even scored a goal. No worries Paul Lambert, Spurs are here to get you season back on track…