a whimper.
Spurs played out the second leg of their Round of 32 Europa League tie with Fiorentina much in the same way the first leg had gone but with a scoreline that saw the Italians progress.
So much for gaining Champions League entry this way, that after all was the cherry on top of the cake of winning a trophy that the winners went into the senior competition next season.
Well at least it ends the Thursday night, Sunday afternoon debacle.
Yes it was a game much like the home leg, Spurs start off brightly, can’t score, spurning chances and then are not so much caught by a sucker punch but punch themselves in the face.
There were chances to put this tie to bed in the first leg, here in reality they needed two goals. One could have come early on when Eriksen was fouled in the area for a blatant penalty. The fact that inept Jim Beglin commentating said there was little contact when the Fiorentina player clattered into the Dane’s leg pretty much proved it was a bang on spot kick.
Beglin not only in the long line of nobody ex-footballers stealing a living as a pundit, as a prime example along with the likes of Michael Owen and others that TV companies will hire anyone that at one point in their life wore a Liverpool shirt.
Then I suppose there was the real turning point, Soldado’s latest howler.
Really, really wanted Soldado to score last night, just to shut up the haters but then he goes and does that to you. Ball over the top, Eriksen makes sure he doesn’t interfere from an offside position and Bobby is through on the ‘keeper when he decides to pass to Chadli and under hits it. It was awful, just soul destroying. You know he’ll move on and he’ll return to the form he arrived with and quickly lost. You know he’ll probably score against Spurs in this competition next season. Home and away.
After missing a gilt edged chance like this there was only one more Spursy thing to do and that was to give a gift of the opening goal.
A bit of needless Chuckle Brothers passing between Eriksen and Bentaleb, led the latter doing his usual panic pass to get rid of the ball, very Jenas like, which in turn led to Fazio coughing up the ball to Gomez. The German straight through on Lloris as Fazio couldn’t get back and well Spurs still needed two but one would bring extra-time as it stood and what with Sunday’s cup final, it wasn’t what was needed, even if now you’d snap their hand off if offered.
As with the previous game things had changed at half time and not for the better. Spurs faded and Fiorentina came into it. Then the killer blow came just over quarter of an hour after the opener. When another defensive howler, this time by Vertonghen let Salah in to score.
Some said Salah could give Chiriches at right-back a tough night. Well he wasn’t up against Vlad that much but I thought the Romanian defended well. A couple of good early tackles on the edge of his own box gave him confidence. Kyle Walker was on the bench and no doubt looked on confused at those tackles Vlad made as he did it without grabbing or using his arse but actually using his feet to kick the ball. It’s something I don’t see Walker contemplating any time soon.
Well at the start I said Spurs needed two, they still did and two would have been enough to see them through on away goals. It’s just that they never looked like getting them, yes Kane came on and had an offside goal chalked off, Eriksen had a bang late on that actually made their ‘keeper do something but bar that even into the last 10 minutes you never felt it was coming.
And it didn’t, leading to another meek exit from the Europa League.