if they weren’t around?
Nobody likes Stoke, the place, the team, it’s fans, but after their third four nil thrashing on the trot they might be missed by Spurs.
I think Mark Hughes pre-game talk about how Stoke have improved after Spurs beat them on their own patch four nil, made this four nil even more the sweeter.
His face was a picture.
It’s just a shame in the end that it was a one half performance – the first during which all four goals came – and not a full 90 minute one, more added in the second half would have been so much better.
Still, you can’t have everything.
No but you can have Harry Kane. The one season wonder, is at it again. Harry loves Stoke. Of the twelve goals Spurs have put past Stoke in these last three games Harry has half of them.
With his first he became the the first Spurs player to score 20 goals in three consecutive seasons since Greavsie. It was his 100th club goal, in not a long time, while say Walnutt who keeps claiming to be a striker has been at it for over a decade and just reached that figure.
It came just before a quarter of an hour was up, there’d been early chances, but after a bit of interplay around the Stoke box the ball bobbled to Kane, thanks to a nifty back-heel from Stoke’s Shawcross, for Kane to finish it of perfectly.
His second took another quarter of an hour or so, during which time they missed more chances that made you think a Stoke equaliser was coming up. Crouch had a shot saved by Hugo, when he should have been flagged for offside, it was bleeding obvious, he was never onside, but not to the inept officials, more on that later.
A goal from a corner! A goal from an Eriksen corner! Telling though a corner not just aimlessly put into the box, hitting the first defender. No put outside the box straight to the waiting Kane for him the smash it in. A cracking goal, when the dolt Alan Smith is praising a Spurs player you know it’s good.
How do you leave Harry Kane so open? Have to ask Mark Hughes.
Didn’t have to wait that long for his third, just five minutes. His second hat-trick of the week, his third in a few games, came via a wicked deflection from a free kick. It was on target, so it’s his match ball.
He could have had all of the games four goals, when he took the ball down brilliantly, from Eriksen’s nod on, and set off for goal, he’d done the defender and would have been entitled to go for goal but unselfishly he played in the unmarked Dele for his fourth goal in these three stuffings of Stoke.
A classic bit of leadership from Kane. He knows what Dele has gone through, self inflicted, this week and so helped him out.
It’s funny reading the media since Dele’s red card, for again an awful challenge, and how they’ve all been up in arms but how many of those incensed midweek missed out Whelan’s challenge on Vertonghen in their reports of this game. Two footed, off the grounds, out of control, reckless, injury threatening, studs showing, thuggish, certainly as bad, if not worse than Dele’s, it ticked all the boxes for a straight red card, yet got a yellow and barely a mention.
Dele did well in this game as, not unsurprisingly, Stoke targeted him and were taking it in turns to have a go and try and rile him into some retaliation but the lad was having none of it. On this evidence lesson learned.
Well it had taken them all the game in the previous two to get four, it only took ’em a half here. Unfortunately they couldn’t add to the tally. Better officiating would have seen Stoke down to 9 men, Whelan straight red and Charlie Adam two yellows.
The latter went off to boos for what the commentator said was perceived rough treatment of Gareth Bale
. I don’t think he knows the meaning of the word perceived. Bale just perceived the two scummy challenges, one which ended his season with perceived ligament damage.
In the end Adam didn’t damage any Spurs players, for a change, but both Toby and Jan went off, which completely took the gloss off the four nil stuffing handed out. It could have been worse, with Kane’s looking crocked after he collided with the post but thankfully he carried on. When he did make was, just before the end, again it wasn’t for Janssen. Again with the game in the back the Dutchman didn’t get on, Pochettino really looks to have given up on him.
Thankfully there’s a week to get the pair of defenders fit, because with that pair in a back three, it’s working again, yeah I know, it was only Stoke…