Nearest Covering Defender is the Out-of-Focus one in the Background
From the depths of our meltdown, it’s now been recognized
that we are a decent side and we do have some decent players. This good news has obviously travelled to
Europe as three of our players got their first ever call ups to the senior
squads. Graziano Pellè is in the Italy
squad for the first time at the age of 29 and at one year older, José Fonte has
got the call from the new Portugal manager.
To be fair, he had a better chance under the new manager as this guy has
actually heard of him. The biggest
miracle of all though is that Roy Hodgson called up Nathaniel Clyne having
finally realised that after 2 years of evidence, he’s our best right back. Clyney now has a chance to prove that he’s
better than the injured Glen Johnson which he should be able to do, just by
putting a pass to a team mate or knowing what defending actually is. The call-ups for the other two are equally
pleasing though, especially for José, having been with us from League 1
days. Graziano is in despite having been
written off by some of our more knowledgeable supporters a whole 6 games ago.
Today we travel to White Hart Lane to play against a
Pochettino led Tottenham who are so far proving to be the same as always with
aspirations of a top 4 finish which they won’t get this season as long as
Mauricio has a hole in his arse. Home
defeats already by West Brom and Liverpool in a distinctly average start and
the natives, not to mention Daniel Levy, won’t be best pleased if they lose
again today. A piece came out in a
newspaper this week about the circumstances of his move to Spurs and it didn’t
paint Pochettino or Levy in a particularly good light. To be honest,, whether the article was true
or not, I don’t give a shite any more.
Bollocks to them. We’ve moved on
and they’re welcome to eachother.
Team news and we are as we were with just the one chance to
the squad from the QPR game with Florin Gardos replacing Jason McCarthy on the
bench where he was joined by Corky and Shane Long and in his last appearance
before we find someone else who can do something apart from run in a straight
line, Emmanuel Mayuka.
As was the trademark for Pochettino’s last team, Spurs
started well and soon won a corner as Rose tried to manhandle his way past
Tadic. The corner was met by Vertonghen
who looped a header towards goal but Bertrand easily cleared off the line.
Our first chance came on 8 minutes as we worked down the
right hand side and Pellè crossed low.
Naughton played an airshot and the ball fell to Mané but the full back
got back to block his sidefooted effort.
The next Saints chance came on 20 minutes as Mané isolated the Naughton
and ran at him, crossing low and Morgan and Graziano managed to get in
eachothers way so neither got a shot in and the ball bobbled through to Lloris
in apologetic fashion.
I quite like Danny Rose as a player but he’s a horrible
little shit and he proves it by cynically scything though Tadic and picking up
a yellow card. Ryan Bertand, who almost
seems too nice at times, is a fraction late on Naughton on the other side and
gets the same but Naughton is unlucky and can’t continue to be replaced by
Dier.
When Spurs got the ball down they were looking dangerous and
Lamela and Eriksen played a 1-2 to send Lamela running through our
midfield. A pot shot from 30 yards was
tipped wide by Fraser down low to his left.
With Spurs getting up a bit of a head of steam, we needed our midfield
to shut things down a bit but every time Big Vic went near a player and muscled
him off the ball, Mike Jones’ whistle went and Spurs got a free kick. We were getting penned in a bit and
personally I was hoping we’d get to half time at 0-0 but sods law says that as
soon as you start thinking that way, it all goes tits up. Rose lobbed a ball forward, Adebayor
controlled and turned and galloped down the left, into Chadli, out to Eriksen
and bang, through Alderweireld’s legs, bottom corner, no chance for Fraser,
1-0, fuck off. It’s a good goal to be
fair though if you’re being hyper-critical you may think that Alderweireld
should have thrown himself at Eriksen to try and block it.
There was no time to worry about that as we lost the ball
upfield and they broke on us again and Chadli picked up an Adebayor pass,
bundled past Fonte and was clean through on Fraser. As he fired past him we all waited for the
net to bulge but we got lucky as the ball smacked the inside of the post and
came back out again. Having survived
that we won a free kick through Manè up the other end and Tadic had a go from
30 yards but though his effort was on target, Lloris got down to save. Later replays showed that some pace was taken
off the free kick by a handball on the edge of the wall. Never mind ref! Half time and 1-0 down and not really playing
well. The free kick at the end aside,
our set pieces had been bloody awful and with Pellè getting no service
whatsoever, it was hard to see where we’d get a goal from.
Saints started the second half well and on 51 minutes, Steve
Davis played a ball to Tadic who put Mané through with just Kaboul in between
him and Lloris. Across came Kaboul and
won the ball with a strong challenge which wasn’t a foul in my eyes but the ref
gave it which was consistent in his approach to the Big Vic challenges earlier. He’s the last man so he has to go surely but
the ref only flashed a yellow card. Unless
the rules have changed and I’m not aware of it, a foul with no covering
defender, stopping a goalscoring chance is a straight red card for fucks sake. It’s a law of the game and there’s no
interpretation necessary. Another
defender who may be able to intervene is the only interpretation that a ref can
put on it, otherwise it’s black and white.
Kaboul is the last man, he’s fouled him, there’s no one else near, he
has to go. Like I said, I don’t think it was even a foul but he has to go once
the ref has deemed it as a foul. Harsh
or otherwise, he has to go. Saints have
a tendency (which I don’t particularly like) of surrounding the referee and
making sure he’s aware of the issues surrounding a foul on one of our players
but we weren’t here, possibly because it was soft. Kaboul though, should be off the pitch and
the ref should be held to account because he isn’t. Needless to say, we fucked up the free kick.
Spurs aren’t attacking much but when they do they look
dangerous, either through the pace of Chadli or though the fact that Fraser is
having a bit of a mare and everything is bouncing off him including an Eriksen
cross which thumps off his chest and bounces to safety. Just after the hour mark and we’re gifted a
chance to equalize as Pellè’s flick from a throw in goes to Kaboul who produces
a shockingly shit volleyed slice along the ground to edge of the box and Big
Vic steams in, connects well but it’s too close to Lloris who palms it aside so
another major stroke of luck for Kaboul.
For twenty minutes we huff and puff without producing clear
chances. Ronald has thrown the dice and
brought on Long for Big Vic and gone 4-4-2 but most of the action concerns
Sadio Mané. Firstly he takes on Eric
Dier and goes down holding his face when he’s been caught in the chest. I fucking hate that shit and I hope someone
has a word. You’ve won the free kick so don’t
be a wanker and try to get someone sent off.
Shane Long puts Bertand away on the left and he fires in a wonderful low
cross to the onrushing Mané who only has to make contact but his right footed
effort barely makes contact from 6 yards out and instead of a certain goal
conceded, Spurs have a goal kick.
Fucking hell it’s bad. It isn’t
happening today and all that did happen in the last 10 minutes was Tadic
getting booked for fouling Danny Rose who has been kicking lumps out of Tadic
all game. Oh the irony.
And so it came to pass that our 6 game winning run came to an
end. Bugger. It was an odd sort of game in truth with
plenty of midfield scuffling and short on goalmouth incident. On balance of play you might say a draw would
have been a fair result but if pushed to pick one team or other that deserved
to win, you’d have to say Spurs. Against
that you could point out that we didn’t get the rub regarding the refereeing
with the Kaboul non-red card being the most obvious of a few decisions we
didn’t get. It’s about taking your
chances though and Spurs scored when they were on top and we had a solid gold
chance to equalize during our best spell and blew it horribly.
The most disappointing thing for me was that we knew exactly
how Spurs were going to play as per Pochettino’s blueprint but we didn’t take a
leaf out of the book of the teams who were decent against us last year. We didn’t break quickly when we won the ball
and we didn’t turn defence into attack quickly through accurate long balls to
the wingers or Pellè. Koeman tried
something different by going 4-4-2 but in my opinion it should have been Davis
who came off instead of Big Vic as the big man and Morgan can maintain
dominance in midfield on their own and Davo is hardly a goal threat.
Ronald was left to defend Sadio Mané in his post match
interview which he shouldn’t need to do and he had a little comment about the
Anti-Pochettino chanting which will of course get sensationalised in every
article you see written about the game.
Pochettino for his part said all the right things but that’s easy to do
when you’ve won. Also, he probably meant
something else but the interpreter wasn’t around to make sure. For what it’s worth I thought Spurs were bang
average but to be fair to them, the stopped us from playing and found a way to
win. So, it’s 5 one goal defeats from 5
meetings with Spurs in the Premier League – bastards. Rest assured that I still hate Spurs and Levy and I still desperately want to finish above them but today has shown me how difficult that might be. Sing yer own fucking song though you dicks.
You won’t get any doom and gloom from me. We’ve had an off game and we still could have
easily got a point from it and we’ve dropped down to 3rd in the
Premier League table with Chelsea, Manchester City and North Devon United
making up the top 4. It’s not a bad
place to be. Next up is the
international break and following that it’s another one of our bogey sides
Sunderland at home. We’ve failed to end
the Spurs jinx but it’s certainly time too end the Sunderland one and it’ll
have the added bonus of annoying that arsehole Poyet.
Keep the faith.
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