1. Son’s Unique Brand of Selflessness
In football these days it seems you can’t swing a cat without someone chirping away about new-fangled formations, or all manner of quirky statistics and allsorts. All rather complicated, what?
Enter Son, stage-left, and suddenly football was broken down to playground level again The chap simply gets his head down and sets off on his onei-man mission to dribble past as many people as possible. If there were no white markings on the pitch he would presumably have taken off across Teeside, trying to shimmy around every man, woman and child in the North East. Frankly, once Sone has the ball, neither friend nor foe is going to see it for a while.
Seasoned visitors to these parts will know that this chap is not necessarily my particular brand of cognac, but in a world of neat sideways passing that can often carry all the threat of a neutered rabbit, a quick-footed type like Son can have a well-organised defence thinking to themselves, “I say, this wasn’t in the manual.”
2. Janssen – A Man For Others
I think it’s fair to say we can forget all that rot, peddled on his arrival, about Victor Janssen being some sort of unstoppable goalscoring machine who hits the net in his asleep. The chap is clearly instead more of a great big lumbering giant with a heart of gold, the sort who reunites orphans with their kindly aunts and saves small villages from famine.
He was at it again yesterday, doing all the selfless stuff, with no goal in mind other than the greater good of those around him. The polar opposite of Son, some might suggest.
If there were a ball to hold up, he would manfully roll up his sleeves and hold it up. If possession needed shielding while team-mates galloped up in support, I’ll be damned if he were not shielding the thing like his life depended on it.
Naturally enough then, when Sonny decided he had gone a good 30 seconds without trying to dribble his way out of the North-East, Janssen once more did the honourable thing, holding off his man – with back to goal, naturally – and timing his lay-off just so, for Son to gather up without breaking stride and ping home.
And that rather summed up the chappie. If we are hoping for a van Nistelrooy sort of egg, who will loiter in the six-yard box resolutely folding his arms until the scent of a goal wafts his way, and consequently poking and prodding in 20-odd goals a season – well we had better make ourselves comfortable. Janssen’s strengths seem to lie in running defenders ragged away from goal, peeling into spaces to allow Alli and gang to grab the glory.
3 Squad Rotation
After last season’s team selections – which had all the reassuring consistency of the sun rising, right on cue, each morning – this season our glorious leader has chopped and changed as if discovering a shiny new toy with all manner of bells and whistles to keep him entertained.
This makes perfect sense. Ploughing into the Premier League one minute, and then Champions League and whatnot five minutes later, requires a pretty delicate set of fingers and toes, and Pochettino is duly doing his bit with some natty midfield tweaks.
Last season, dabbing on the war-paint with neither Dier nor Dembele in sight would have some of the weaker members of our clan hurling themselves out of the nearest window in despair. This time round however, the Brains Trust barely break sweat, and simply slot Messrs Wanyama and Cissoko into the middle.
Wanyama duly set about doing his best Dier impression, and although the chap tends not to concern himself too much with covering the full-backs, as is a particular signature of Dier, he put himself about with a healthy set of blocks and crunching tackles, to help things tick along.
Son, as mentioned, got the nod further forward, and this time Lamela was left to twiddle his thumbs on the bench – and so on. The gist of the thing is that this is rather a charmed life, what? The handful of signings made over the summer might not have caused robust types to go weak at the knees and reach for the smelling salts, but they have contributed to a healthy gaggle fit for the rigours of a midweek-weekend binge. Before you can turn to a nearby soul and remark “This squad depth lark is not such a bad thing after all?” we seem to have hit upon a formula that allows us to take down a lower-rate Premiership team and then turn our attentions to the CL meat, without breaking sweat.
4. Cissoko’s Room For Improvement
That said, I thought the boy Cissoko fluffed his lines at rather crucial junctures yesterday. I don’t really see the point of being built like a fortified tree trunk, if at the vital moment you allow some other soppy chap to clamber all over you and nod the ball apologetically into the net. Clamber right back at him, dash it.
On top of which, the instruction manual suggested that the whole premise of Cissoko is to burst forward from midfield scattering every man, woman and child in his way. Yesterday I would suggest the young bean did no more than dabble in this, which was fair enough given that we had Boro penned back for much of the game anyway, but nevertheless. All the more galling then, to see Boro bring on a substitute, the Traore chap, who promptly out-Cissokoed Cissoko with a full-length gallop which tore a sizeable strip through the heart of our team.
5. Quietly Mooching Into Second
Still, such things are minor quibbles. It was only Middlesbrough, and so on and so forth, but win these irritating little away days and the Top Four – or more – starts to take care of itself. Almost without anyone realising we’re up to second, and while there will be tougher tests, not least next weekend ,things have pootled around pretty darned serenely to date.
Shameless Plug Alert – AANP’s own book, Spurs’ Cult Heroes, continues to retail at Amazon and Waterstones, hint hint