to it.
Spurs take an early lead, get pegged back and then Christian Eriksen saves the day in the dying minutes as the beat Sunderland with only Defoe’s lack of goal going against script.
That horrible moment when the commentary starts and it’s an English voice and you know the topic is going to be one thing and only one thing. Defoe, Defoe, Defoe ad fucking nauseum.
Banging on and on about how he scores goals, well he hasn’t score many during his recent Premier League outings and well his goal scoring record was rather overrated when you took in the amount of chances he had and fluffed.
For all the abuse Soldado got over his midweek miss onto the bar, Defoe has a load of them in his locker. Woodwork, goalkeeper, side netting, if he hit the back of the net half the amount he hit those other items we could talk about him being a top scorer.
Anyway for the first time he didn’t score on his debut and that when you consider he was playing against Spurs pretty much sums him up. Well that and of all the offsides by Sunderland were down to him and him alone.
He was of course offside in the build up to being fouled by Vertonghen that lead to the visitors equaliser. Not the first officiating howler of the afternoon regarding offsides. The Belgian had opened the scoring nearly half an hour earlier in the 3rd minute.
Early goals does seem to be part of this pattern. After Stambouli had been fouled the free-kick was played by Eriksen to Walker, who dithered before returning it, Eriksen played it into the box where a weak clearance fell to Vertonghen. Lovely touch by the big defender got the ball onto his wrong foot and his shot took a wicked deflection to give the ‘keeper no chance.
No chance is what Lloris had with the equaliser. From that Vertonghen on Defoe free kick, Larsson put the ball where no ‘keeper would have saved it. Sunderland could have been level by then though but Fletcher, well for a better word Soldado’d a chance from a cross from Spurs left. Answers on a postcard to the whereabouts of Danny Rose.
Some claim the could have also had a penalty after Defoe went down from another Vertonghen challenge, this time after inept defending by the other fullback who back to his shielding worst.
What followed was a typical game for Spurs, having nearly all the ball but never quite looking like doing anything with it while at the same time looking vulnerable to the counter attack, especially down the wings. A soft spot with that pair of fullbacks.
In other areas they looked defensively stronger. Stambouli, in a game where the opposition had 35% of the ball, made 7 tackles, hell it could take Bentaleb a couple of months to amount that number. Dier and Vertonghen not unsurprisingly looked quite good behind that help that’s not there with our friend.
Kane was quiet compared to other games, still had his shots, one near the end of the first half looked in until it hit the post. Noted that it went away from Soldado on the rebound, if it had been the other way round I’m 100% that the ball would have landed at Kane’s feet. But then if it had Kane would have scored with Bobbie it’s probably not even fifty fifty.
As against Palace the opposition with a packed defence saw Kane as the danger so manned up on him, this gave Eriksen the freedom to see him pretty much run the game for Spurs in attack, Chadli also having a quiet one.
It was the 88th minute, with Defoe long since departed goalless, when Eriksen did what Eriksen does, scoring the winner from the edge of the box, from Townsend’s ball. Townsend received the ball fro Dier and set off on a run, one of those runs that has either cul-de-sac or stupidly wide shot written all over it. For a change though he played the pass.
The pass though really looked like Kane was the intended target, it was played behind him, luckily Eriksen had powered down the pitch to get on the end of it.
There was still time for Lloris to save the day, he hadn’t much to do but one earlier save was bettered by that from Graham’s shot three minutes into added time. It was a hell of a save, almost man-of-the-match save. From that came the corner which allowed the officials to show what level they are operating at.
Not a week goes by without a number of howlers from those in black. This was at a level above or should that be below what we’ve seen previously. With nothing to loose Sunderland’s ‘keeper came up for their corner, played out after the set piece it was a mad charge up field when Paulinho played the ball to Vertonghen who rolled it into the net and started, as we all did, to celebrate, which was cut short as the linesman stood there with his flag up for offside.
The lino was then desperately screaming into his mic to the ref that with the ‘keeper up there was only one Sunderland player between Vertonghen and the goal. Chris Foy, one of the real inept refs, agreed.
The only problem being when the ball was played to Vertonghen he was in his own half so couldn’t be offside no matter what.
Said before that the line runners get away with it as the refs take all the blame well the ref was a couple of yards away from him at the time so both should be on the chopping block here. Who knows what goal difference of just one could cost a club at the end.
Figured Sunderland should pay Defoe with the 50p coin below but maybe the officials should be too, saying that though most should just be sacked.
