you.
And after Spurs surrendered two points against West Brom to go 7 points behind the league leaders there’s actually still hope, with three games left.
Yes Leicester have to do something they haven’t done much this season, go three games without winning, losing at least one in the process.
Three games against teams that either have nothing to really play for, or can’t be arsed to play for or are determined not to play for. ManUre, saving themselves for the cup, Everton gave up weeks, if not months ago and Chelsea well they have stated they don’t want to do Spurs any favours.
While Ranieri’s mob face teams that’ll roll over like Swansea, Spurs will be up against teams that’ll do their damnedest like WBA.
It didn’t quite look that way in most of the first-half, well apart from the usual Pulis ploy of sticking a flat back ten, full of central defenders, to block and frustrate. Certainly no ambition from the visitors to take more than a point.
Well apart from the ambition to kick Spurs players more than they kicked the ball.
The thuggery of Pulis’ mob will of course go unpunished, as it always is, while those that retaliate will be highlighted time and again by the media until the FA step in.
So after picking up his Young Player of the Year award, Dele Alli is their new target to bring down. Looks like a swinger at Claudio Yacob. Tweeted early that he had to stop himself getting sucked in as it was obvious from the off he had a target on his back. Pulis had instructed the likes of Yacob – who offers no more on the football pitch than being a hatchet man, a poor man’s hatchet man at that, in other words a typical Pulis player – to get into Alli, wind him up while kicking him up in the air.
He got sucked in and will now probably miss the rest of the season.
Will it matter? Leicester cruise past a ManUre with both eyes on the cup final and well nope it won’t. It did take the attention away from Walker’s kick at Rondón, which the ref had a word about but showed no cards.
So at the end Spurs had only two shots on target in the whole match, neither of which came after the first 20 minutes. Yet if the attempts that were just past the woodwork or the three that hit the woodwork had gone in during the opening period of complete dominance, then things to state the bleeding obvious would have been somewhat different.
Alli involved again, lovely flick for Kane’s shot off the post – es perfecto
was how my commentator put it – after initially winning back possession. Eriksen’s brilliantly disguised far-post free-kick that skiffed the top of the bar.
It wouldn’t have changed West Brom though, as even after going behind just after the half-hour they showed very little ambition than to come away with a one nil defeat.
That opener wasn’t exactly the greatest goal Spurs have scored this season. Not quite up there with Dele Alli against Palace, or Kane against Woolwich.
An Eriksen free-kick bundled in by a combination of a low lying Jan Vertonghen and Dawson’s arm through the ‘keeper’s legs. Not beautiful but at the time hope. Hope that WBA would have to come out and play, well attempt to do what they call playing, and allowing the floodgates to open.
They didn’t open as the second-half performance by the home side was flatter than the flattest thing that had ever been flattened. Even with Dembele gliding about showing the cloggers the ball then gliding away leaving them in bafflement at where it had disappeared to they couldn’t get out of second gear.
When with just over 15 minutes to go as the equaliser went it the cries of “it was coming” went up. Because, well, it was.
An unholy tangle in the box, ends up with Hugo, after being blocked off by Sessegnon – a foul by the way – taking Dier out while the own-goal scorer climbs on him to head in. Dier left injued, if he’s missing as well as Alli, well.
And as Spurs didn’t really look like getting that winner a lot of people’s belief left. Pochettino knows that he has to say it’s mathematically still achievable while being unlikely. You just never know, this season has thrown up strange things and Ranieri’s sides have a habit of doing a Devon Loch.
So there’s still… hope… gawd ‘elp us…