Tag: Emerson Royal

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Spurs match reports

Spurs 1-0 Palace: Three Tottenham Talking Points

1. The Change in Shape and Personnel: Porro

After a couple of weeks that have been heavy on action and light on plot, our latest Glorious Leader did the honourable thing and picked the option marked “Do Something – Anything – Differently”. Which translated into the hooking of Messrs Perisic, Dier and Kulusevski; and a line-up that, while still seeming pretty lopsided, was at least lopsided in a new and interesting way.

The change in formation struck me as one of those jobbies in which in possession the gang adopts Format A, but out of possession they revert as one to Format B, if you follow. So at various points Emerson was tucking in as a third centre-back, while at others he seemed to be surreptitiously shuffling off towards the flank to adopt a more conventionally right-back pose. In fact, it appeared at certain times as if our heroes were going about their business in a 4-4-2, which rather took me back to my salad days in the 80s. A pleasing riposte to false nines and that sort of thing, what?

Back to the general mass of humanity on our right side, and the reappearance of resident eccentric, Emerson Royal, was quite the pleasant surprise. For a start, he displayed a hitherto unknown sense of inconspicuousness in returning to the fold completely under the radar. I’d pretty much written the fellow off for the season, and rather forgotten about him in truth, what with one damn thing and another at N17.

But there he was, in that unspecified, hybrid defensive role on the right, crossing all t’s and dotting all i’s in the manner one would expect of arguably our greatest ever player. However, if the reception he received from the paying masses was rosy, I suspect it paled into insignificance next to that he received from Pedro Porro.  Poor old P.P.’s eyes may light up when charging into the final third, but if he’s shown us one thing over the last couple of months it’s that he couldn’t look less comfortable in his defensive duties if he slung a sandwich board about his frame bearing the legend “I Just Want To Be A Winger”, and continued wearing it while trying to defend.

With Emerson babysitting him however, it was a different story. Porro was able to shove most of his eggs into the attacking basket, and on balance one would say he ended up with a few more pluses than minuses to his name.

He slung in enough crosses that sooner or later he was bound to strike oil with one of them, duly doing so to create our goal; but as well as his general output I was pretty satisfied to see him scuttling into view, stage right, with every attack. Again, the goal was a decent example of that, Porro getting his head down and hurtling over halfway out on the right, even as the attack was still having its genesis somewhere nearer the left flank – all of which preliminaries meant that when Kane lobbed the ball off towards the right of the area, the young frijole seemed to have approximately a quarter of the stadium at his mercy to do as he pleased.  

2. The Change in Shape and Personnel: Dier (and Romero and Lenglet)

The other principal consequence of the rejig was the removal of Eric Dier from any area in which his slightest involvement might spark the usual disaster. It is, of course, a little difficult to judge the success of someone’s absence. One could, in theory, emit a joyful whoop at the fact that Dier was not in situ to dither on the ball or play a chum into trouble or mistime a lunge or get dragged out of position or get outpaced; but this seems a little hollow. Rather like celebrating the fact that a piano hasn’t fallen on one’s head – good news, of course, in anyone’s book, but more the sort of thing one curses when it does  happen, rather than celebrating when it doesn’t.

More usefully, the absence of Dier seemed to have a calming effect upon Romero, who, since returning to the day-job with a World Cup winner’s medal around his neck, has given the impression of turning up for work every day since absolutely sozzled in celebration.

Yesterday, however, with the absence of a calamitous defender on one side of him, and the presence of a capable defender on the other, Romero appeared pretty steady on his feet. Of wild lunges and cavalier shimmies forward, there were none. He still found time to pick another lovely 50-yard pass or two – hang your head in shame, Sonny – but it was the principal business, of keeping things under lock and key at the back, that were of concern, and he seemed focused enough.

I’m not sure how much credit Monsieur Lenglet should be given for this. I’m never really sure how much credit Monsieur Lenglet should be given in general. He seems to be one of those chappies who has loosely the right sort of idea, and can also contribute a bit bringing the ball forward, which helps; but who will just shrug the shoulders and let out a sad gallic sigh if an opponent gets the wrong side of him, accepting his fate as irreversible, which nettles a bit.

Be that as it may, not being Eric Dier seemed to work in his favour yesterday, as did the fact that alongside him (I’m shuffling right-to-left here) he had Ben Davies in Cautious Mode, both full-backs for the day clearly having been drilled on the importance of being as boring as possible, for the greater good. Anyway, the nub of it was that Lenglet-and-Romero more or less worked, as a central pairing, at least when up against Palace at home and with Fraser Forster’s enormous frame behind them.

3. Ryan Mason

A triumph for Ryan Mason, then, a bean about whom I can’t really make up the mind, three games into his second stint.

That he cares about the club, with all the loveable idiocy of you, I or any other long-suffering fan, is beyond doubt. Cut Mason open and he bleeds lilywhite. Thrust a microphone in his face immediately after the final whistle, and within ten seconds he’ll forget the rules of diplomacy that the PR mob have spoon-fed him, and instead launch into some pretty impassioned stuff, his voice rising an octave, which is really the tell-tale sign that it’s all coming from the heart. After the public sabotage of Conte and Jose, this sort of thing is welcome stuff. This sort of thing makes me want to clasp his hand with firmness and meaning, and there’s not much stronger sentiment than that.

The players are apparently fond of the chap too, or at least happy enough to do his bidding and enquire how high when he yips ‘Jump’. Again, after a couple of years’ worth of managers taking every opportunity to advertise to the world how inept the players are, this seems a pretty useful commodity.

Tactically, I find him a bit harder to fathom. The changes made yesterday seemed to do the trick, at least suggesting a spot of welcome clarity at the back, as well time well spent behind closed doors. It’s hardly his fault that there is not a creative midfielder to be found at the club; and his adjustment to a back-four featuring bona fide full-backs, while seemingly about as common sensical as it gets, was much needed (and yet, bizarrely, completely beyond the grasp of those who trod the path before).

I also rather like the spirit with which he approaches in-game tweaks and substitutions, as if struck by a realisation, which again had completely eluded his predecessors, that by virtue of his role he possesses the capacity to move the pawns about a bit and thereby effect change in real-time. The famous Dier-related adjustment against Man City was apparently his bright idea; and he can take a sizeable chunk of the credit for second half comebacks against both Man Utd and Liverpool, improvements of sorts being evident after his tuppence worth at half-time.

But nevertheless, I have my doubts in this regard. Improved though we may have been after half-time in the aforementioned matches, they were still his troops, under his orders, who fell behind in the first place. (One sympathises here, admittedly, for he was dealt an abysmal hand; but one cannot really have it both ways – credit for the comeback goes hand-in-hand with chiding for the deficit.)

Nor does young Mason exactly come across as particularly Churchillian in manner. Fun though it is to see a genuine fan taking charge of things, for all his being a likeable young soul I struggle to imagine him either stirring fire in bellies or plotting tactical works of genius. Not his fault, of course, that he’s a contemporary (or junior) of half them, but still. Gravitas and nous do not really seem to be his selling points.

The big caveat here, of course, is that this judgement is based purely on the evidence of what Mason presents to the public in press conferences and interviews and whatnot – and here I may well do him quite the injustice. The impression he gives in front of the camera is that of a passionate fan, rather than one of the game’s great thinkers; behind closed doors there may well lurk a far more astute mind (indeed, the murmurs one hears from behind the scenes suggest as much), and one heck of a communicator too.


For now, at least, his presence at the helm makes a goodish amount of sense. Whatever the problems at the club, they were not of his making. If he can inspire our lot simply to care as much as he does, politely demote those worth demotion (irrespective of reputation) and continue to instil the same level of organisation and clarity that was evident on Saturday, then it will be a job pretty well done.

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Spurs match reports

Spurs 2-0 West Ham: Four Tottenham Talking Points

1. Emerson Royal, Cult Hero

Over in the West Wing of AANP Towers, I once idled away a few months writing a full-on tome about our lot. I mention this not to drum up sales (although if you will insist then step right this way) but because the title of the thing – Spurs’ Cult Heroes – hove to mind yesterday as I watched Emerson Royal complete his stunning character arc from hopeless incompetent whose every involvement brought howls of rage, to dashing conqueror, whose every touch cheer was cheered to the rafters.

The definition of a ‘Cult Hero’ is pretty loose (one man’s Tony Parks penalty save is another man’s 866 Steve Perryman appearances, if you get the gist), but most seem to agree that there is a distinct category carved out for those maverick sorts, who by virtue of, amongst other things, a) being slightly batty, and b) committing every fibre of their being to the cause, are taken to heart by the adoring masses. Throw in a villain-to-hero redemption arc and it all becomes pretty irresistible stuff. Watching in awe as Emerson went into overdrive yesterday, I was forced to admit that his had suddenly become a pretty strong nomination for Cult Hero.

Emerson did not have to spend much time dusting down his defensive frock yesterday, given that West Ham did not really take any interest in crossing the halfway line. If a winger had to be tracked and his cross stifled, Emerson tracked and stifled obediently, but this was hardly a day on which the “Back” part of the “Wing-Back” role featured too heavily. (Which is mildly ironic, as the defensive lark seems to be his forte, he being arguably more naturally sculpted to be a full-back than a wing-back.)

As with his ten chums, any letters sent to his loved ones about the first half would have made for pretty brief reading. ‘Huff’, ‘Puff’ and ‘Some laboured passing’ pretty much covered the contributions from all in lilywhite in minutes 1 to 45.

But it was in the second half that Emerson really burst into life, starting with his goal. It should come as no surprise to anyone by now that he insists on augmenting our counter-attacks by nominating himself as makeshift centre-forward. I suspect that where once Kane, Sonny and chums may have tried to talk him down, they now simply give the shoulders a shrug and let him do his thing, finding life easier that way.

And thus it happened that with Hojbjerg looking to unleash his inner Modric, and Richarlison and Kane mooching about in deeper territory, Davies and Emerson arrived at the identical conclusion of “Well, why the hell not?” and effortlessly morphed into an oddly lethal strike pairing.

Having made all that effort to get into prime goalscoring territory, Emerson was not about to let the opportunity slip, and rolled the ball home with the debonair style of a fellow who’s done such things a good 267 times previously.

I suppose conventional wisdom would have had it that at this point, with those bizarre sprints into the centre-forward spot having brought him his goal, Emerson might have considered it a fine day’s work and gently eased off into the background, feeling rather pleased with himself and content to wind down the clock. But Emerson is not conventional. These maverick cult hero sorts rarely are. He instead regarded that goal as the springboard for The Emerson Royal Show, and played the remainder of the game as if determined that his every following touch would make the highlights reel. Thus we were treated to no-look passes, thumping slide tackles and the general sense of a man having the absolute night of his life. He is – and I cannot stress this enough – a most extraordinary young bean.

2. Ben Davies, Wing-Back

Ever since young Sessegnon was bundled off to A&E I’ve given the chin a thoughtful stroke or two when puzzling over who might give Perisic a breather on the left, but for some reason the concept of Ben Davies wing-backing it never really dawned on me. No explanation for it, but my mind always veered off into Emerson Royal country. Strange the way the mind works, what?

Anyway, Ben Davies did well enough in the role yesterday to suggest that he might be a viable alternative to Perisic. (In fact, given Perisic’s rather bonkers cameo, which involved two needlessly aggressive hacks at opponents, plus a pitiful attempt to defend his own area that contained little in the way of tackling and much in the way of tumbling over his own collapsible limbs, I wonder if Davies at LWB might become a more permanent option simply by default.)

The TV bod gave Ben Davies the MOTM bauble last night, which seemed to me to stretch the concept a tad, but I followed the point – namely that he did all that might reasonably be asked of a fellow, and without too many alarms.

As with Emerson on the right, there was little in the way of defensive employment, so most of his energies were devoted to invading the opposition half and giving the arms a manic wave, so as to attract the attention of whomever happened upon possession at that point.

All this was well and good, and evidently blew the minds of the Sky Sports detectives, but I was vastly more concerned about the outputs Davies conjured up, once in receipt of the ball. Now here, I fancy I do the fellow a dastardly turn, for in gauging his abilities up the left flank I cannot help but compare his crossing to that of Perisic. And for all Perisic’s flaws when it comes to aggressive hacks and collapsible limbs, it is widely acknowledged that his crosses are of a most devilish vintage.

Davies, by contrast, and in common with everything about him, delivers crosses that do everything stated in the Instruction Manual, while offering precious little to make the jaw drop and eyes bulge. Davies’ crossing was acceptable enough. His short passing was acceptable enough. His tackles were acceptable enough. All of which was comfortably good enough to sink West Ham, but none of which arrested the attention and drew me towards the fellow as the game’s outstanding performer. Still, one man’s meat and all that, what?

And moreover, at the critical juncture, Davies rattled off his lines to perfection, galloping in from the flank to take Hojbjerg’s pass in his stride, effecting a handy swerve infield to wrongfoot no fewer than three West Ham fiends and then rolling the ball into the path of Emerson, for the opener.


3. Hojbjerg’s Pass

Talking of which, amidst all the rattle and hum about Emerson’s one-eighty, and Davies’ supposed match-winning innings, I’m inclined to stamp an indignant foot and demand that all in attendance stop prattling and do a bit of homage to that pass from Hojbjerg, which set everything in motion in the first place.

Now it is true that until and beyond that point this all felt like standard Hojbjerg stuff. He pottered around and looked increasingly irate, as he usually does, but one could not really put a hand on the Bible and swear to the Almighty that one chap and one chap only was dominating this particular midfield and that chap’s name was Hojbjerg.

He did enough – so no doubt Ben Davies was goggling away at him in awe – but at nil-nil, he, like most others, was plodding along a bit.

Until he suddenly unleashed from nowhere one of the best passes of the season. I suppose one could point out that the was generously gifted all the time in the world by the West Ham mob, as well as the freedom of pretty much the centre circle – but still. At the time at which he hit ‘Send’, Ben Davies was but a twinkle in the eye, stationed on the left touchline, and literally half the West Ham team were blocking the smooth delivery from starting point to destination.

None of this mattered a jot to Hojbjerg, who directed and weighted the ball to absolute perfection, allowing Davies to seize upon it without breaking stride. It was the sort of creative brainwave for which our heroes had been absolutely howling, at least in the first half, and while things were bucking up a bit in the second, this was nevertheless game-changing stuff.

While saluting Hojbjerg for his moment of inspiration, the whole joyous episode did make me wonder – if this talent for spotting and pinging a pass from the gods is something of which is the rightful, legal proprietor, might the fine fellow not attempt one or two of these each game?

4. The Penalty Shout

It doesn’t matter now, of course, and I daresay some amongst you might give the head a sad shake and wonder where it all went wrong with AANP – but I can’t get over this gubbins about the penalty in the first half.

Or rather, the non-penalty. Of course, the AANP lineage strictly forbids that the appointed arbiter of proceedings be questioned: the ref’s word is law, and shall be respected as such, without exception.

And I suppose that should be the end of it really. Yet when I see dastardly goings-on inside the penalty area gaily waved away, when they would almost certainly attract a stern eyebrow and wagging finger anywhere else on the pitch, I do tend to dissolve into a fit of apoplexy and let a few of the fruitier elements of Anglo-Saxon fire from my mouth like shots from a gun.

The official line is, apparently, some perfect drivel along the lines that if a fellow is having trouble with gravity and taking a dive to the dirt, then he has absolute carte blanche to scoop up the ball in his hands and bestow upon it loving caresses, until such time as he has restored his balance. At which point, presumably the suspension of the game’s laws ends, and we play football once again.

Utter rot, of course. I mean, the ruling itself has an element of sense about it – if a grown man has somersaulted into the atmosphere and is about to land on his nose, one permits him to eject a paw in order to preserve his decency – but the West Ham blighter was in no such predicament, and Solomon himself could not convince me otherwise. The W.H.B. wobbled a bit, shot out an arm to give the ball a friendly pat and then restored his apparatus perfectly comfortably. As above, anywhere else on the pitch and there is not a referee alive who would have passed on the opportunity to make his whistle heard.

Still, as stated, one simply accepts these calls with good grace. Mercifully it mattered little anyway, and, as I saw it writ elsewhere last night, remarkably we are now in the Top Four despite seeming to have lost just about every game we’ve played this season. Long live that Stellini chap, what?

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Spurs match reports

Spurs 1-0 Man City: Six Tottenham Talking Points

1. Conte-Ball: Defending

I suppose the more smug amongst us would claim, on the basis of recent history in this fixture, to have seen this coming (although I’ve always thought there’s a certain wonkiness to such reasoning, namely that the results and personnel and whatnot from years gone by ought not to have anything to do with getting one’s hand dirty in the here and now).

Anyway, the point here is that if some of the smarter coves had pencilled in “1-0” beforehand then good for them, but I’m not sure any man, woman or child on the planet would have foreseen us accompanying that 1-0 scoreline with a masterclass of this ilk.

‘Masterclass’ was the term I used above, and I’ll fling it around a bit more now. From the off it was apparent that City were going to grab the ball and hang on to it for most of the evening. And frankly, not an eyelid was batted at that. I think we’ve all seen enough of this mob to know that that’s how they set about in life, and of itself it doesn’t really cause that much damage. One just learns to work around it, and our lot certainly seemed to take it all in their stride. Collective shrugs and diligent positioning seemed about the sum of it from our heroes, with everyone knowing their lines and the whole thing panning out as if it had been rehearsed this way for months.

When City oozed up towards our area, our back five generally did sensible things, which started off as a relief and quickly became a rather satisfying watch – doubling up on Grealish and Mahrez, blocking off shots, that sort of thing. It helped that Pep pulled his usual party-trick of wildly over-thinking matters rather than simply shoving the best midfielder around behind one of the best forwards around and letting them go wild; but that wasn’t really our concern. If City were adamant that feeding Haaland was only to be a last resort then that was their prerogative. The crucial thread from a lilywhite perspective was that as and when required, our back-five kept the other lot at arm’s length.

Nor was this set-up the sole preserve of the designated defenders. As City scratched their heads and popped possession around in the middle of the court, our attacking triumvirate obediently trotted off to their designated targets, allowing Bentancur and Hojbjerg to dash around putting out fires in midfield. It was all so well organised that one could well imagine Signor Conte lighting a most satisfied cigar, if such things were not – presumably – frowned upon in the healthcare centres of Turin.

2. Conte-Ball: Attacking

However, defending against City is but one part of the challenge, and a relatively straightforward one at that. The broader picture was more complex. The whole thing was like one of those GCSE Maths equations from back in the day, containing all sorts of garbled messages within various sets of brackets, and just when you’re patting yourself on the back for deciphering the contents of one set of brackets, you look up and realise there’s about fifteen others to come. So it can be with playing Man City. Setting up to defend against them is all well and good, but after about five minutes of that I did find that the ghost of Jose Mourinho was sidling up to me and quietly enquiring whether I could stomach it for a full 90 minutes.

Mercifully, Conte’s masterclass extended well beyond the perimeter of our own penalty area. There was also a plan for the opposing penalty area, and extraordinarily, the critical component of this was Eric Dier, of all people.

The gist of the thing was as follows. With City rolling the ball around their own playpen, casual to the gills, our front three shoved up in the faces of their back three. This was a steady start, thrusting the main characters into the foreground as it were. But it was the supporting cast who caught the eye, because Eric Dier then mooched forward from his position slap bang in the heart of defence, and stationed himself slap bang in the heart of midfield.

If one were a little petty and childlike about such things, one might gently clear the throat and refer to having banged on for weeks about the need to shove another body in midfield; but that is hardly germane. What was critical here was that Dier’s temporary foray into midfield meant that Hojbjerg and Bentancur had licence to press further forward. And the upshot of all this small print was that when our esteemed hosts shuffled the thing from A to B without due care and attention, Hojbjerg was on hand to snaffle the life out of the poor mite in possession, setting up Kane for his moment. Cue more cigar smoke billowing around the hospital wards of Turin.

The other element of the plan was arguably the most fun part, comprising as it did our heroes racing up the pitch on the counter-attack every five minutes, against a bizarrely undermanned opposing defence. In the first half this tactic kept things interesting, albeit the winnings never really extended beyond the occasional corner.

But in the second half, by golly it looked like every time we cleared the ball we would, within about three and a half seconds, be up the other end and clean through on goal. Of course, at one-nil, one always gives the fingernails a good going over, but nevertheless it was actually pretty riotous fun.

I had never quite followed the whirs and clicks of those “Expected Goals” statistics, but I think the point of them is to reflect that, in a game like yesterday’s, for all their possession City didn’t really look like scoring (even the shot that hit the post seemed to do so rather apologetically); while our lot could conceivably have had three or four in that second half. Possession be damned, this was a triumph for Expected Goals and cigar smoke.

3. Emerson Royal

And as if cantering to a pretty serene and composed victory against the Champions wasn’t already peculiar enough, the poster boy for the whole thing was none other than Emerson Royal.

I have heard it said that the rationale in shoving overboard Messrs Spence and Doherty while treating Emerson to pats on the head and tummy-tickles was that while the former pair are moulded in the same gung-ho shape as Pedro Porro, Emerson is a more defensive sort of breed, and therefore increases the options in the squad. This actually makes a decent wad of sense, but for anyone struggling to follow the thread, yesterday’s match offered a handy visual illustration of the key points.

There will doubtless be games in the coming weeks in which teams opt for the more conservative approach and sit back waiting to see what we’re about. In such instances, the more attacking wing-backs – those from the same conveyor belt as Pedro Porro – will doubtless be called upon for attacking input. Yesterday, however, was a day for clear-headed defensive thinking, and to his credit Emerson plugged away at his task like the dickens.

And it was quite some task, make no mistake. He was up against renowned trickster and professional ruffian Jack Grealish, a fellow as adept at beating a man as he is at tumbling over that same man’s outstretched lower limbs.

It was one heck of a contest. Emerson may have miscalculated the coordinates once or twice, but nine times out of ten he seemed to get the better of Grealish, at least depositing the ball beyond the boundaries of the pitch to let all colleagues to his left catch their breath and reset.

And while Emerson may have displayed hitherto unseen powers of long-term concentration in his defensive duties, he was still happy to throw off the shackles and jump on board whatever attack we stitched together. Indeed, in the second half, as Sonny, Kulusevski and Kane went through the gears and over halfway, Emerson could be seen regularly steaming up and straight through the centre like some demented Olympic sprinter, not necessarily waving his arms and pulling faces but quite possibly yelling “Give it to meeee!” as he motored into the heart of City’s holiest of holies. Quite batty, that chap.

4. Hojbjerg

The consensus seems to be that Emerson was the pick of a pretty impressive bunch, but P.E.H. was hoving into view in his wing mirror at a rate of knots. In fact, Hojbjerg seemed to appear pretty quickly in the wing mirrors of all present, having one of those games in which you looked in one direction and saw him ploughing over a couple of challenges, then looked in a completely different direction and saw him chasing down a City bod.

A lot of the fellow’s work tends to be undertaken in the shadows. Sounds a bit murky admittedly, but I mean his job often involves adopting an appropriate position and stance of readiness, and as such forcing whichever opponent to think twice about whatever perfidy was lined up. The chap aborts, and Hojbjerg, without appearing to do much, has averted a spot of danger.

Yesterday, however, felt a bit like that moment when the anonymous vigilante pops up from out of the shadows, removes his mask and gives cheery waves to all around him, drinking in a spot of applause for good measure. As well as covering a decent amount of mileage in shadowing runners and blocking off passing angles, Hojbjerg also waded knee-deep into the thick of things, and could regularly be spotted breaking up attacks and emerging from a melee of limbs with something of a limp, but the ball, nevertheless, ensconced in his care (his role in the goal being a case in point).

A word similar merit too, to Bentancur, whose ability to receive the ball in a pretty perilous range of circumstances, but calmly manoeuvre a course to safety like the best of them, is now rolled out so regularly I rather start to take it for granted.

5. Sonny

And while on the subject of brief words of commendation being sprinkled like confetti about the place because why not, I’ll reach over and give Sonny a playful punch on the upper arm.

I appreciate that some in the gallery might, at this point, think things are getting a little out of hand, and furtively shove the decanter to a spot beyond my immediate grasp. But while Sonny might not have been solid pillar upon which the whole jolly ruckus was built, he made his own little contributions here and there in our counter-attacks; and, more pertinently gave another glimpse or two that Form may be returning to her throne.

Last week saw the welcome return of Sonny’s Shooting Boots – lower league opposition or not, it was a relief to see the chap strike a ball with the sweet timing of a cover drive at Lord’s. And yesterday, I felt like a further box was ticked in his rehabilitation, as on several occasions he collected the ball and set off on a gallop.

Nothing particularly memorable there, you might think. But consider the context, of his inability all season to take three steps without stumbling like a chap having the dickens of a time remembering which leg is which, and the sight of him tearing through the wide open spaces yesterday made the the juices flow and pulse quicken.

There was a spot of end-product thrown in too, the loveable bounder picking a couple of sensible short passes to his left and right at the conclusion of his jollies, where previously in such circumstances he had seemed to get a little lost in a cloud of options and bounce straight into opponents. Not quite vintage Sonny just yet, but the evidence suggests it’s on its way.

6. Kane

The final word, however, belongs to Harry Kane. In truth, the first and middle words ought to as well but I’m sure he won’t mind. His finish was actually one of the less sensational variety, although it still boasted the impressive quality of being his first kick of the ball in the match.

But this was a day to salute the fellow’s longevity. As he himself noted afterwards, the years have rather whistled by – eleven of them now, since the Shamrock Rovers affair – but to rack up 267 goals in that time is really the sort of stat that makes you pause, compute and then widen the eyes and say “Golly”.

When I consider the hours my old man, AANP Senior, has spent rattling off the exploits of Jimmy Greaves as the stuff of legend, it is easy to take for granted quite what a privilege it is to witness Kane go about his relentless business each week. Kane will be spoken of in the way Greaves was, and while there is no real knowing what the blazes will happen to English football in the coming decades, it seems rather a stretch to imagine some other johnnie buzzing along and rattling off 268 or however many more. A privilege to have him about the place. Bravo, sir

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Spurs transfers Uncategorized

Spurs’ Transfer Window: 6 Tottenham Talking Points

Yes it’s a tad late, but quite appropriate for Spurs’ transfer window, n’est ce pas?

I’m not normally one for piping up about the comings and goings. Largely because one just ends up speculating, and then looking rather an oaf when the chappie one praised to the heavens turns out not to know his right foot from his left when he eventually trots out onto the field. Better to lay low, I’ve found, and let the various cast members pickle their own insides. Much easier to cast judgement on a fellow with the benefit of hindsight after all, what?

This time, however, I do feel moved to act. Not to such extremes as penning a violently-worded letter to The Times, you understand – there is, after all, a time and a place. But dash it all, packaging off Bryan Gil? Forsooth! Erasing from existence Matt Doherty because of a last-minute administrative error? What the devil?

Not to distract from the fact that we’ve ended up making a couple of natty moves, but one does sometimes look at our lot and find there’s no other thing to do but scratch the loaf and goggle a bit.

1. Pedro Porro

First the spiffing stuff. He may sound like the headline act of a nursery rhyme, but young Pedro Porro ought to be precisely the cog this particular machine has been yelling for. No need to insult anyone’s intelligence by banging on about how Conte-ball absolutely positively must, as a matter of the utmost urgency, deploy fizz-popping wing-backs in order to work. The problem has been staring us all in the face for months now, but finally the great purse-string holder in the sky has flung a bit of money at the problem.

Not that a thick old wad of notes is any sort of guarantee to solve this sort of frightful mess. After all, upon flogging Kyle Walker we threw half of the winnings on Serge Aurier of all people.

But in this instance, I’m willing to go out on a cautious limb and suggest that we haven’t necessarily bought ourselves a complete dud. (Which is pretty high praise around these parts.) Two Champions League games doth not a comprehensive dossier of a chap’s abilities make, but I do remember thinking when he played against us something along the lines of “Golly, I’d rather have that bounder than Emerson plugging away on the right”.

Admittedly the chap may not know the first dashed thing about defending for all I know, but on the front foot he seemed rather handy, and goodness knows our lot our screaming out for that sort of muck from a wing-back. Indeed, the notion of Messrs Romero, Bentancur, Kulusevski and – if he lives up to the billing – P.P. all ganging up together to cause a spot of mischief on the right, makes the AANP heart sing a bit.

Porro (Pedro? Some ludicrous nickname?) appears blessed with a burst of pace and a rather fruity right foot, which ought to help. On top of which he gives the air of one of those old boys who was rather miffed to be cast as a Defender when the jerseys were being handed out back at school, and has spent every day since pointedly charging forward into the final third in an ongoing act of pique.

There is, naturally, a Bissouma-shaped disclaimer here. For no matter how competent a laddie looks when coming up against us in days gone by, there’s a fair old chance that on arriving in N17 and donning the lilywhite he will immediately morph into an incompetent charlatan who is not entirely sure what shape the ball ought to be.

But nevertheless. We needed a right wing-back who a) is well acquainted with the do’s and don’ts of the wing-back trade, and b) Our Glorious Leader could actually tolerate. We now have the aforementioned. Time to get down to brass tacks.

2. Danjuma

I feel something of a fraud here, as there’s not much I can add about Danjuma that I didn’t rabbit on about at the weekend, following his Preston jolly. In short, never having set eyes upon him before, I was happy enough to witness him roll up his sleeves and muck in. No shirking from this one. He waded into the thick of things from the off, seemed nimble of foot and bludgeoned himself a goal by virtue of insisting that he ought to have one rather than any particular finesse.

Positionally, he appears to be rubbing shoulders with Sonny and Richarlison in the little tub of bodies marked “Kane’s Backup”, and apparently can also wander off to the left if the need arises.

With Conte evidently deeming young Gil the sort of egg whose exit from the premises couldn’t come soon enough (more on that anon) we seemed to need an extra pair of attacking legs, and in sharp contradistinction to the unfortunate young Gil, Danjuma seems to come with a few additional slabs of meat and muscle plastered about his frame.

I’ll be honest, the whole thing has more than a whiff of the Bergwijn about it, but that, I suppose, is no bad thing.

3. Bryan Gil

At this point, however, things take a turn for the rummy.

A couple of potentially handy signings (or, more specifically, one potentially crucial signing and one potentially handy one) is all well and good, but for Conte to haul up Gil by the ear and kick him out of the country seemed a bit thick. I liked Gil. Gil made the pulse quicken. In a team that too often lapsed into endless sideways and backwards passing, Gil seemed forever gripped with the notion of simply tearing around the place and seeing what good works came of it.

Still, for all his fine efforts and endless energy, Gil did rather lack in the physique department. Conte, slippery eel that he is, had given the impression post-World Cup that he was actually coming round to the young pill – consecutive starts and whatnot – but it was all a spot of dastardly misdirection. All along Conte had him down as no more than skin, bone and hair, so off he bobs.

Mercifully it is but a temporary arrangement, and with a bit of luck the young specimen will return in the summer beefed as well as bronzed. But the element that really grates is that he is returning to his former digs, at Sevilla.

No concerns there, one might think – until recalling that in order to obtain the chap in the first place, we gave the very same Sevilla one serviceable Erik Lamela plus somewhere in the region of £25 million. And now, as a result of this latest spot of jiggery-pokery, Sevilla find themselves in possession of Lamela, approximately £25 million – and Bryan Gil, dash it! I mean really, what the hell sort of deal is that?

4. Matt Doherty

If the mechanics of the Bryan Gil deal seem to be slathered on a bit thick, it’s a mere bagatelle compared to the absurdities seeping from every orifice of the Matt Doherty fiasco.

On the face of it, the release of one of multiple right wing-backs, in order to facilitate the serene entry of a new, more advanced model, seems about as neat and tidy as they come. Firm handshakes all round would seem to be the order of the day.

Peel back the layers however – and one really doesn’t have to peel back too many, the top layer here will suffice – and a spot of mind-boggling incompetence takes shape. The rub of the thing is that the original plan was to slap a sign saying ‘Loan’ on Doherty’s forehead and bundle him onto a plane bound for Madrid, where he would stay until the summer, by which point a state of perfect equanimity and sense would have engulfed the running of THFC.

This being Spurs, however, such a straightforward course of action was never going to land. It turns out that, loosely speaking, these days clubs are not allowed to loan out more than 8 players at a time. A new one on me, I admit, but then I’m not a major European football club, for whom the loaning of players is part of the routine. For any such club, this ought not really to have been an issue as long as they were able to grasp the basics. Our lot, however, seemed to sally along blissfully unaware that such a rule existed; or perhaps fully aware, but not staffed by anyone capable of counting above 8.

Either way, the upshot was that with literally an hour or two until the deadline passed we found ourselves in possession of one excess Doherty, and at a bit of a loss as to how to shift him. At this stage I would have thought that, having only last season spent £15 million to bring the fellow in, simply cutting the cord and letting him drift off elsewhere would pretty much be the nuclear option. I mean to say, the chances of us recovering a full £15 million for him might have been thin, but the chances of us recovering something for him seemed middling-to-fair.

Incredibly however, the grands fromages of the club – presumably the same mob who are down in folklore for haggling into the wee small hours of deadline days gone by for a pittance here and a desultory payment there – just casually wiped off this £15 million asset in its entirety, tearing up Dhoerty’s contract, one imagines with a gay old smile and cheeky wink, and elbowing Doherty out of the club’s existence without much more than a muffled “Adio– ah, Pedro!”

My mind, which until then had been boggling away like nobody’s business at the combination of incompetence and absurdity, at this point gave up and simply melted away. It was simply too much to wrap the bean around. Irrespective of Doherty’s virtues or otherwise as a player and employee, I simply couldn’t fathom how a professional establishment could be that unaware of a key regulation; leave until literally the eleventh hour that for which they’d had a month to prepare; and then write off a multi-million pound asset with little more than a shrug.

As for the footballing side of all this, it certainly crept up from behind and shouted ‘Boo!’, but with the dust – and, more pertinently Pedro Porro – settling I’d qualify this as one I can stomach comfortably enough.

Poor old Doherty never really got to grips with things, for which he only takes a small portion of the blame in truth. There was a point, towards the end of last season, where he seemed to find his straps, and went on a run of half a dozen or so consecutive games at right wing-back, during which he did a decent impression of a chap who knew what he was about. Cutting in towards the area, popping up at the far post as an auxiliary attacker – that sort of good, honest muck.

Alas, that was all ended by the footballing equivalent of being attacked by a maniac with an axe, against Villa I think, and thereafter the chap never really managed more than an hour here or a ten-minute stretch-of-the-legs there, before being written out of the script in most peculiar fashion. Curious stuff, if no great loss.

5. Djed Spence

The other major outgoing was the no doubt pretty bewildered Djed Spence, a young flower to whom Our Glorious Leader seemed to take an instant dislike, and then made it his mission to ensure everyone knew it too.

A little green behind the ears he may presumably have been (I say ‘presumably’ because the lad never got to play long enough for anyone to find out), but given that Conte worshipped at the altar of attacking wing-backs it seemed pretty dashed rummy that he should have had quite such an aversion to the chap.

As far as anyone could make out, Spence was one of those coves who thinks that if he’s on a football pitch he might as well be attacking the opposition’s goal, and in each of his little cameo appearances he pretty clearly lived by that mantra. In the absence of anyone else doing much better at RWB, his repeated omission certainly made one remove the hat and give the hair a contemplative ruffle, but there we are. At least until the summer, young Master Spence is no longer of this establishment.

(As an aside, I admire his beans in opting for Rennes, rather than some more glamorous locale. The young bounder wants minutes; and, one imagines, at Rennes, minutes he shall have.)

6. Deals Not Done

While I suspect a few of us could debate long into the night the wisdom of ditching Doherty and Spence while retaining Emerson ruddy Royale, by and large this seemed a transfer window in which the stated aims were more or less met, and as such it’s one of those Satisfactory Enough type of gigs.

That said, however, AANP is the sort of chap who, on being gifted a dozen gleaming sports cars, would pause and question why it wasn’t a dozen and one. And as such, I’ll happily pop a hand on each hip and bleat about the wisdom of ending the transfer window without reinforcements in key areas. Viz, a goalkeeper, a centre-back, a creative midfield sort and another centre-back.

I know the official party line, of course. We all do. There was no way Monsieur Lloris was going to suffer some Doherty-esque ignominy and be cast aside mid-season with nary a mention on the club website. Severely in need of a goalkeeping upgrade we might be, but it is not happening any time before the clocks go forward.

Similarly at centre-back, Eric Dier will get to make as many more bizarrely off-kilter attempted clearances as he likes, because Conte seems taken by him, and that is sufficient. The Davies-Lenglet hokey-cokey will continue likewise. Come the summer, one would expect some serious signings in these areas to be discussed (before those targets head elsewhere and we settle for second-best); but for now, we’re stuck with what we’ve got.

Such is life. In truth I’m grateful that some new blood was brough in at all, particularly at right wing-back. And with Conte’s future still up in the air it may be just as well not to bring in too many of his acolytes. A dashed peculiar transfer window, then, but all told, one that was not too shabby. On we bobble.

Categories
Spurs match reports

Man City 4-2 Spurs: Five Tottenham Talking Points

1. Bentancur

A slightly different hobnob from the norm, this one. Same old outcome, of course, but whereas these things – Spurs matches, I mean – tend to start a certain way (with us going two down), and then adopt a very specific trajectory (of waiting until approximately minute 60 before sparking into life and actually looking pretty impressive on the front-foot), this one, in the interests of variety, flipped all that on its head.

In this instance we didn’t start terribly, which was curious enough. And then for the rest of the first half, we occupied a space somewhere in between ‘Managing Okay’ and ‘Clinging On A Bit’, while crucially avoiding the concession of goals before half-time.

Most curiously of all, we found ourselves two up rather than two down, come the mid-innings break. Hardly merited, but one learns to take the smooth with the rough.

And fairly critical, if easily overlooked, in both goals, was the contribution of Master Bentancur, a bean I would have welcomed back with the most warm and vigorous of handshakes if circumstances had allowed.

As ever, it is easy for the eye to be drawn towards the goals, and other critical moments, when passing judgement on the contributions of the assembled, and as stated, Bentancur rather subtly wormed his way into affairs for both of ours.

But beyond this, and while matters pootled along at nil-nil, he occasionally hove into view like some friendly spectre, to remind us how much better he is than the rest of our midfielders. Shimmies and turns to escape a pack of baying City players, that sort of thing. An ability to receive the ball under a decent spadeful or two of pressure, and still keep his head and get wriggling.

There were a couple of ill-timed lunges too, which were a little less impressive admittedly, but given his ability in possession I was happy enough to churn out that guff about ‘Rough’ and ‘Smooth’ again, and pine for a world in which Bentancur has a bit more support around him.

As mentioned, he played a role in both goals. Firstly, in haring up to the City laddie who received the ball inside his own penalty area.

I must confess to a little shiver of fear, on second viewing, that VAR might stick in its nose and submit Bentancur’s challenge to forensic detail, being concerned that the proportions of man and ball he contacted were weighed towards the former. But apparently it was tickety-boo. So, smooth with rough once more. Bentancur’s eager press had done enough to force the City fellow to wash his hands of all responsibility, and rather oddly gift the ball straight to Kulusevski.   

A minute later, a clearance of some description dropped from the heavens, and Bentancur casually plucked it from the sky with his foot, much like a wicketkeeper might do with a pair of oversized gloves.

That in itself elicited an approving noise to emanate from the AANP voice-box – the sort of sound one would make if one said “Oh, I say!” but without actually using words. Ignoring the odd looks I received from those around me, I remained glued to the screen, to see Bentancur pop the ball off towards Kane. The pass, admittedly, was not quite as pristine as one had hoped, but Kane did enough, as did Kulusevski out on the right, and in a couple of shakes of a lamb’s tail the ball was in and Emerson Royal of all people was taking the acclaim.

The Brazilian’s might have been the name on the scoresheet, but the AANP heart swelled with admiration for the real hero, he of the earlier input, Rodrigo Bentancur.

2. Emerson Royal

While the selection of Bentancur was greeted with unfettered joy around these parts, I would be wilfully deceiving my public if I suggested Emerson’s appearance prompted a similar reaction. Still, there he was and there we were, so might as well hope for the best and get down to it, what? 

And he did a decent enough job, in truth. Should an uninitiated visitor ever pitch up and request the lowdown on the chap I fancy I would outline 3 key features, viz:

  1. He genuinely thinks he’s brilliant 
  2. He adopts good positions
  3. His outputs tends to be dreadful

And he more or less stuck to the script yesterday. The incredible self-belief remained in situ and undimmed (and good for him – I’m by no means a fan, but don’t subscribe to this business of booing the blighter).

Defensively he was adequate, which may sound like faint praise but frankly was a few notches up from Dier, Davies and one or two others. 

And in the other direction his eyes rather lit up whenever the attacking gong sounded. One of the few joys of Conte-ball is seeing one wing-back arrive on the end of a cross from the other, and if you don’t mind me butchering this definition a bit, his presence at the far post from a Ben Davies cross in the first half very nearly freed Kane for an unmarked pop.

At one point in the second half I had to rub my eyes and look down at the contents of my tumbler in some wonder because it seemed for all money that as we attacked Emerson was sprinting straight through the middle in the centre-forward role (referring us all neatly back to point number 1, above).

And then of course there was his moment of glory, the curious egg briefly morphing into Lineker to poach a dashed difficult header for our second.

No doubt about it, the goal was masterfully taken, but that aside Emerson’s outputs were as Emerson’s outputs generally are. As ever it was clear that any joy to be had on the right would not have as its genesis one of his crosses.

Still, no calamity befell, and his goal was a triumph both of endeavour and skill, so I’m happy to file this away as one of his better days.

3. Perisic

Any regular suckler of the AANP sauce will know the drill by now – plenty of pointless fluff, a finger jabbed with meaning into the ribs of one of the usual suspects and a spot of gooey fawning over the crosses that emanate from either sacred clog of Ivan Perisic. But really, if your team is as lacking in creativity as our lot, who wouldn’t stand and purr at the sight of I.P. hoisting the thing as if on a string, into the single most devastating spot in the opposition area game after game?

I fancy I’ve heard that he has 8 assists to his name in lilywhite this season, which a) sounds about right, and b) even if not right is believable enough. Either way it hammers home point – namely that the chap is a dashed useful sort to have patrolling the left, either to deliver his own customised outputs or to pop up for the provision of helpful input when crosses are delivered from the other side.

All of which renders even more startling the stat – for which I’ve admittedly used a healthy swig of dramatic licence and made an educated guess – that the blighter has yet to score for us. It feels like he has come pretty dashed close to so doing, at various points this season, having regularly arrived as the auxiliary forward for countless attacks, to deliver the coup de grâce, only to be foiled at the last, in cartoon style, by countless unforeseen interruptions. 

A perfect example materialised yesterday as a City bod who wasn’t even looking managed to deflect Perisic’s shot onto the post, a routine he would not have pulled off if he had been attempting it for weeks.

The flip-side to the rich attacking harvest offered by Perisic is that he treats defending as if a completely different sport, and one entirely foreign to him. Blame could be shared around pretty liberally for the various goals that rained down upon us from various angles last night, but Perisic was woefully at fault during at least three.

In one instance Mahrez waggled a foot or two and that was enough to prompt Perisic’s resignation from the task at hand, he pausing only to dangle an insincere leg as the chap sped past him.

For another, he tracked Mahrez as the ball was lofted aerially towards him, but seemed to consider this sufficient, the concept of challenging the chap, or shoving him off balance, or in any other way inconveniencing his attempt to head the ball seemingly well off the Perisic radar.

And then for another, Perisic almost comically over-committed himself to a 50-50 just outside our own area, seemingly motivated by the prospect a full-pitch counter-attack rather than focusing on the more pressing concern of stopping City from pummelling us once more.

So one of Mother Nature’s select defenders he is not. But not for the first time the whole sorry debacle takes my mind back to the Croatia team of the World Cup, a mob that set up in 4-3-3, with 3 preeminent passers absolutely controlling business in midfield (Modric, Brozovic and Kovacic); Perisic left of a front-three, with not too much defensive onus; and only lacking a decent centre-forward to make hay. Should I ever be gifted a 30-second audience with Our Glorious Leader, that is the tale I would tell him.

4. Lenglet

A substitution to which Signor Conte seems peculiarly wedded when we are, inevitably, chasing a game in the latter stages, is Lenglet for Davies, or vice versa. An odd one, if you ask me. Maybe something about fresh legs or whatnot.

Anyway, it happened yesterday, like clockwork, achieving nothing in an attacking sense, as always. What caught the eye, however, was that even though he barely had time to work up a sweat, Lenglet still managed to distinguish himself as amongst the very worst of our comfortably bad coterie of defenders.

At one point he tried a casual 5-yard pass inside his own area, pretty inaccurately, towards a chum whose coordinates had been identified for attack by a City sort. And then in the dying embers of the thing, he failed to deal with that most challenging of situations for any footballer – the football.

There it was, spherical as they come, lobbing towards him without anyone in the way of it, courtesy of an uncultured heft from Ederson. Now one would imagine that any human who had demonstrated basic motor skills while still being bounced on their mother’s knee would have the capacity get their body in the way of a ball, and kick, head or otherwise interact with it in order to send it off in the opposite direction.

So what the hell possessed Lenglet to let the thing apologetically skid off his frame and into the path of Mahrez right behind him is anyone’s guess.

I suppose if there was one redeeming feature of this absurdity it is that the game was already lost. But honestly, it’s just not cricket, what?

5. Lloris


Of course, while on the subject of ghastly errors that are scarcely credible amongst professional footballers, poor old Lloris popped up again.

Rather a shame, because his first half had some impressive qualities to it. He dealt – just about – with a few crosses of the high and swirly variety, whilst being jostled by various genetically-engineered City goal-beasts, and also made one particularly natty save, changing direction just so to avert a shot that caught a pretty angular deflection. Things appeared to be looking up for the fellow.

Alas, there then followed the second half, and his run of good form and fortune ended rather abruptly. For City’s first he came flying out horizontally to give the ball a reassuring pat, but inevitably miscalculated and landed within a heap of limbs – some his own – and facing his own net, which seemed an impressive feat. Anyway, he having missed the ball completely and by some distance, the upshot was that it pinged around a bit before someone or other poked it in – there no longer being a goalkeeper present to prevent this – and Lloris’ day had taken its usual turn for the worse.

And then to seal the deal, he was beaten on his near post for the third. A deflection was present, ‘tis true; but this does not alter the fact that he had left a significant gap through which any shot, deflected or otherwise, might squirm.

Lloris’ sorry fortunes might be deemed emblematic of our current woes. Or they might not. Either way, while it does at least keep Woolwich reined in a bit, it was another pretty shoddy collapse, and from a position of unexpected superiority too, dash it. Ah well. On we bobble!

Categories
Spurs match reports

Brentford 2-2 Spurs: Six Tottenham Talking Points

1. Same Old Same Old

For those of us so distracted by all that World Cup guff that we forgot how the good souls of N17 go about their business, our heroes helpfully wasted no time at all in reminding us of their preferred Don’t-Bother-Until-Two-Down gambit.

No point in fighting it at this stage. Best just to shrug the shoulders, stiffen the upper lip and accept. They’ve had a whole month to chew over the tactics, practise their drills and so on, and this is the result, so no matter how nonsensical it seems to those of us in the outside world, the plan – of waiting until two down and then going full throttle for the final 30 – is evidently here to stay.

There is of course a temptation categorise our performance as only fitting the extremes of Gubbins on the one hand and England-vs-Holland-at-Euro-96 on the other; but actually there are plenty of nuances in between, and I thought our lot hit a few of those yesterday.

In possession in the first half, even at 0-0, I thought we at occasionally least tried, to force matters. It was not as turgid and sideways as it has sometimes been. Hojbjerg in particular seemed struck by an urge to get through his day’s work in a hurry, and generally tried to shovel the ball along tout de suite, often looking for a diagonal pass “in between the lines”, as they say, which seemed a pretty progressive idea.

Of course, behind him Eric Dier was doing his best to negate any such urgency, the fellow seemingly deciding that, having spent a lifetime receiving the ball and taking approximately 23 touches before distributing it, he would be damned if he were going to change the routine so soon after Christmas. So this was a bit of a spanner in Hojbjerg’s plan, but help was on hand from other quarters, notable Sonny, who at least seemed to recognise what the Dane was attempting and bobbed up in space to receive the thing.

Short we may have been on clear-cut chances in the opening hour or so, but intermittently there were clearly recognisable attempts from various members of the clan to insert themselves deep within enemy territory and fashion something. Nevertheless, it wasn’t quick or inventive enough, until we conceded the second and the whole bally lot of them reacted like a bunch of Roman slaves being freed from their shackles and given the run of the town.

2. Dreadful Goals Conceded

Beavering about in slightly uninspiring fashion might have been bearable, but married to defending so bad that one wondered if some of them had spent six weeks actively un-learning how to play the game, it made for some pretty serious lip-chewing from the galleries.

For the first goal, I apportion little blame to Forster (big man). The deflection was unhelpful, and he displayed adequate reflexes in simply blocking the thing as it flew at him. Of course it would have made for a pleasant festive treat if his hands like a frying pan had scooped up the thing, but we can’t have everything, and he at least did the basics.

Which is more than can be said of those in snazzy sky blue around him. The initial cross picked out a Brentford forward on the right, who appeared to have been gifted the freedom of the Tottenham penalty area, or at least half of it. One appreciates that this was something of a counter-attack, but really, to leave the chappie unattended in his own acre of land seemed to be laying it on a bit thick, even for the first game back.

Perisic was barely in shot on the TV cameras, while Bissouma, having tracked the fellow’s run stride-for-stride, had rather maddeningly veered off towards the centre rather than sticking with him to make a challenge, evidently attracted to the ball like one of those less intelligent moths you see going hell for leather at a flame.

So much for part one of the attack; the sequel, picking up immediately after Forster (big man) had parried the shot, was pretty much entirely contained in a single act, comprising a Brentford chappie strolling up to the ball and tapping it in, not one objecting soul anywhere near him.

Rewind the VHS and one sees that the Brentford bod in question started his gallop forward at the same time and from the same starting point as one P-E Hojbjerg, only for the Dane to keep his jog carefully within the limit of ‘Slow and Steady’, rather than busting a lung or two to ensure he stayed with his man.

Crosses will be made and shots will be taken, one accepts this; but simply to stand – or jog – around and watch the aftermath, rather than trying to muscle in and prevent ensuing calamity, is just not cricket.

And if that first goal had AANP crafting a few choice curses, the second had the air turning purple. For a start, Dier’s shank to gift the corner in the first place inflamed the passions of the watching masses.

And then, once the corner was delivered, Hojbjerg was again at fault, incredibly waiting for the ball to bounce towards him on the goal-line rather than charging towards it like a frenzied bull determined to clear all in its path. Rather inevitably, a more alert opponent was vastly more proactive about the whole thing, and simply trotted a couple of steps forward, a manoeuvre sufficient to earn him pole position ahead of Hojbjerg, Lenglet and Perisic.

The whole business of zonal marking has a rationale to it, but I rather fancy that if those involved take literally the business of staying in their zones, and simply do not budge from their allotted spots, then the entire system crumbles like a house of cards. One cannot overstate the obvious flaw, that if the defenders in a zonal system do not move at all, then the opponents will pretty swiftly learn to pop the ball around them. It is breathtakingly empty-headed, and yet this is precisely what each of Hojbjerg, Perisic and Lenglet – seasoned internationals – did in allowing Toney to mooch past them and tap in.

3. Perisic’s Crosses

On the subject of Perisic, few in our ranks are quite so maddening in the way they go about things. Credit where due, first of all, his crosses are things of beauty. Be it with right foot or left, he ticks every box you can think of in the Crossing Department, whipping in the things with pace, curl, elevation, top-spin and whatever else is relevant.

I don’t mind admitting that there have been times this season when I have watched our lot labour to get the ball anywhere near the penalty area, and been struck by the thought that we should simply abandon all pretence of subtlety, give the ball to Perisic and queue up in the six-yard box.

On the flip side, bar these crosses (and occasional long throw-ins) the chap seems to do little else at all. Of defending he wants no part, seemingly viewing that particular exercise as little more than the pause that exists in between attacks, a chance to catch his breath and ponder with which foot he might deliver his next cross. As mentioned, when Brentford pushed forward for their first, Perisic was a good ten yards behind the action.

Of course, this is the consequence of buying a wing-back who is a little long in the tooth. As AANP knows any too well, the march of Father Time is pretty relentless, and anyone expecting Perisic to motor up and down the flank is in for an unpleasant surprise.

All of which would be pretty vexing – but by golly, he does whip in some glorious crosses.

4. Tanganga

If Perisic can at least point to his crosses as justifying his participation, young Tanganga has no such get-out. Now one ropey defensive performance doth not a dreadful centre-back make, and the young bean will doubtless have better days, but alas this was a stinker. If there were an opportunity to make a pig’s ear of a contribution, Tanganga was first in the queue every time.

His headers were wildly mistimed, which was as peculiar as it was ghastly to observe, and he fared little better on terra firma. Even his distribution was below par, passes to Doherty often delivered with too much force or too little accuracy for the wing-back to do much more than scramble to keep the dashed thing within the confines of the playing surface.

His selection was understandable enough – he has featured in recent friendlies, and one would have supposed he were possessed of the sort of assets that would be useful enough in a tete-a-tete with a fellow like Ivan Toney.

Alas, you know you’ve had a pretty miserable afternoon when you look up to see your number raised and the awkward figure of Davinson Sanchez giving those limbs a swing in preparation to replace you; and it speaks volumes of Tanganga’s contribution that Sanchez of all people seemed a clear upgrade once stationed within the back-three.

5. Doherty and Kulusevski

On any other weekend this season, the news that Doherty had been preferred over the wretched Emerson would have been pretty sensational front-page stuff, but in truth when the team news filtered through, such had been the gap between fixtures that the seismic relevance of this pick failed to register in the AANP loaf.

And in fact, for much of the first half it didn’t have a particularly big impact either. I suppose one forgets quite how much the endless faux pas of Emerson prompted howls of rage and despair in those pre-World Cup days, and instead the sight of Doherty keeping his head down and not really doing anything particularly wrong or right in the first half just drifted by me.

But in the second half, once the concession of the second goal forced all concerned to buck up their ideas, Doherty’s assets as an attacking wing-back gently surfaced, not least in bobbing up at the back post as an auxiliary forward, when Perisic or Lenglet or whomever delivered crosses across the box.

However, the real star of the right flank was undoubtedly Kulusevski. Probably our brightest spark in the first half, he was a pretty key figure in the second as well, setting up our equalizer and generally thrusting himself slap bang in the middle of events whenever they unfolded on the right flank. The Kane-Son-Kulusevski triumvirate has still not quite clicked, but this seemed to be due to no fault of his.

With Doherty appearing vastly more attuned to what ought and ought not to be done as supporting act on the right, one imagines that Kulusevski will continue to play a pretty major role in the second half of the season – and Emerson, with a little luck, will have to make do with guest appearances from the sidelines.

6. Hojbjerg

A word in passing on Hojbjerg. At fault, to varying extents, he may have been for both goals conceded, he did a lot to atone for these mistakes in the rest of his game. As mentioned above, in that often lacklustre first half he seemed motivated to push matters along rather than wait for death to reach him, and in the second, as if to ram home the point that he was taking the gig seriously, he popped up with an extremely well-taken goal.

Hojbjerg’s all-round contribution was much-needed too, given that Bissouma, in the first half in particular seemed not to know what sport he was playing. His touch in the first half was oddly appalling, the ball bouncing off his size nines as if allergic to them, and the memory of a few imperious performances for Brighton last season seemed all the more distant.

Mercifully, he picked up a bit in the second half, but there could be no doubt that, particularly in the absence of Bentancur, Hojbjerg was the boss of the central areas yesterday.

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Spurs match reports

Marseille 1-2 Spurs: Four Tottenham Talking Points

1. Sessegnon

I’ll get to the salacious stuff in due course, but during the occasional first half moment when I paused to drink in the full extent of the catastrophe unfolding, one concept that kept bugging me was this business of Sessegnon at right wing-back.

In fact, even before the whistle peeped and all concerned sprung into action, my eye had been drawn to the teamsheet and the forehead had promptly creased. For a start, there was the sight of three more right wing backs, plus one Tanganga, on the bench. (Actually, this was rather well received at AANP Towers, as it meant that Emerson’s interference with proceedings had been restricted, but nevertheless, the cogs were whirring alright.)

Call me old-fashioned, but I had rather assumed that Sessegnon would be stationed on the left, with Perisic, a cove more used to swinging the right boot, assuming RWB duties.  The sight of Sessegnon ambling around on the right from kick-off therefore threw me. It’s happened before of course, fleetingly here and there, but I’ve rarely seen the point of it, and the use of inverted wing-backs in a game as critical as this certainly did wonders for my repertoire of puzzled looks.

Whatever the plan was meant to be, it pretty much died at birth. When the stars align, Sessegnon can be an effective left wing-back – diligent in defence, and pretty willing to stick a foot on the accelerator and make a bit of hay in the final third. Last night however, the stars did not align. If anything, the stars came crashing down from their moorings.

Sessegnon did not make it to halfway, let alone the final third, so whatever the elaborate ruse was around using his left foot to cut inside on the right, we were dashed if we were going to get a glimpse of it. Instead, the young potato bobbed along around the edge of his own area throughout, and while he can’t really be faulted for effort, I felt anything but assured by the sight of him patrolling his spot. Indeed, Marseille’s first decent shot (the volley from the left that Hugo beat away) came about from an attempted Sessegnon clearance that apologetically bobbled about two yards.

A degree of sanity was restored towards the end of the first half, with Sessegnon switched back to the left, but the whole experiment struck me as pretty dashed odd – especially, to repeat, when countless naturally right-footed sorts were giving the beady eye from the substitutes’ bench.

None of this is to suggest that all our first half problems lay at the door of poor old Sessegnon, far from it. For a start the problems seemed a lot bigger than any single player (more on that later). And if we are singling out individuals then Eric Dier, a fellow from whom one would expect a lot better, inexplicably opted to lob a few passes back into our own penalty area, via some passing, low-hanging clouds, as a spirit of general ineptitude spread about the place like wildfire.

So it was not all Sessegnon’s fault by any means; but it would be no understatement to suggest that his deployment on the right baffled the dickens out of AANP.

2. Emerson’s Positive Contribution

Desperate times and all that, but even after observing the car crash that was our first half, and after seeing young Sessegnon square flap around on the right, come half-time I had not reached the stage of yearning for a spot of Emerson to solve things.

But someone in the camp obviously thought that was what was needed, so on he rolled, and promptly introduced himself to the galleries by heading a ball firmly to his right and out of play, when all ten of his teammates loitered at various points to his left.

This seemed ominous, if in keeping with his career to date, but I shifted it from my mind – as is healthy practice when taking in eyefuls of Emerson – and waited keenly to see what might unfold next. And I’ll be dashed if I were not treated to the sight thereafter, of Emerson generally doing the basics in competent and reliable fashion.

It helped, of course, that the entire collective upped their performance level about sixty notches, but nevertheless it was a pretty startling sight to see Emerson contributing healthily as required. Most welcome, but startling nevertheless. As various members of our mob oiled further up the pitch, passing options began to spring up everywhere you looked – and Emerson, to give him his dues, did not shirk responsibility in this respect.

Nor did he overcomplicate things unnecessarily, or bungle crucial interjections. On one or two occasions he galloped up into attack and pinged in a cross as the situation demanded, and while few would suggest that he existed on a different, superior plane to all others, he nevertheless contributed considerably to the marked upturn in our fortunes. Gradually we asserted a spot of control, and, remarkably, Emerson was a played a significant part.

3. Bentancur

If Emerson’s ability to do normal things made my eyes pop out of my head somewhat, Bentancur had the vaguely opposite effect, in that his ability yet again to rise a level or two above everyone else seemed simply to be standard operating procedure.

His anonymity in the first half was a tough one to swallow, but that painful drudgery having been very much a collective effort, one did not dwell. However, whatever the nature of the sorcery that was discussed and greenlit at the break, it seemed that Master Bentancur had been enlisted to play a pretty critical role. With Bissouma thickening things up in midfield (and, in the second half at least, producing one of his better performances in our ranks to date), Bentancur appeared to have a bit of licence to jolly off into attack as the urge grabbed him.

He rattled off his lines with aplomb. Dreamy technique never goes amiss, of course, and having been neutered in the first half he was right on the money second time around; but on top of which, the nature of the thing, with Marseille heaving forward and leaving themselves rather exposed at the rear, meant that Bentancur was often to be observed leading the charge over halfway, sprinting up towards their area, either with ball at feet and killer-pass on radar, or in support of whichever other chappie was at the controls.

It is true that as a collective our lot improved pretty much exponentially, but either because or due to that – and strong cases can be made in each camp – Bentancur was at the hub of much that was good in our second half play. Be it retaining possession and putting in a spot of game-management, or haring up towards their goal, Bentancur was the font from which our goodness spouted. A mild shame that he overhit the pass for Lucas, which would have had the latter through on goal, but that aside his was, again, a performance vastly superior to all others’.

4. First Half vs Second Half

Of course, the column inches on Sessegnon, Emerson and Bentancur amount to polite small-talk. The real front-page news was the umpteenth instance of our transformation from clueless and impotent in the first half, to clued up and punchy in the second – the prompt for such a metamorphosis, as ever, being the concession of a goal.

Why the hell our lot must always wait until falling behind to unleash their better selves is an absolute mystery, but to this end my attention was arrested by a sentence casually lobbed into conversation by Monsieur Lenglet during his post-match buttering last night. Lenglet stated – and I paraphrase here – that the johnnies in the camp were unsure, when pistols were drawn, whether the message from above was fight or flight.

This did not strike me as mightily encouraging. One would have thought that any team at any level would head off to battle with clear instruction ringing in their ears at least as to whether the general approach would be attack or defend. With Conte having a reputation as the sort of egg who drills home tactical instructions for every eventuality, I found the mind boggling a bit at the notion that Lenglet – and who knows how many others? – was not sure in even the broadest sense what the setup was supposed to be.

I certainly understand that a deficit in any game removes any lingering doubt. When trailing, after all, one is rather obliged to up the levels, in order to salvage something. However, the notion that at kick-off the players simply look at each other and shrug, none the wiser as to what course ought to be plotted until they fall behind, seems to me rummy in the extreme.

Another theory being bandied about the place is that Conte is essentially playing rope-a-dope, both in the short- and long-term. In each individual match he wants the opposition to expel every last ounce of puff by around the midway point, so that our heroes have that much more mileage to go snatching and grabbing the points at the death; and over the course of the season he would like us simply to keep pace with things until the World Cup, so that the shackles can be cast aside come the new year and the race be run with a spot more dash and elan. In truth, however, AANP treated this one with a pretty sceptical eye.

Perhaps more believable is the notion that Conte simply does not have much faith in our defence to do as bid, and therefore piles up the reinforcements each game, resulting in scenarios such as the first half last night, when all ten outfield players are wedged within spitting distance of Lloris, and there is no attacking outlet at all.

Whatever the reason, be it accident, design or some otherworldly intervention, it is pretty maddening stuff to ingest every three days. As numerous second halves have indicated, not only are our lot perfectly capable of playing on the front-foot, giving multiple passing options, defending relatively high up the pitch and winning the ball in midfield or higher, but they can actually do it pretty effectively.

All of which makes me fling my head back and howl at them for not simply adopting that approach from the off, and racking up the goals at various points prior to the absolute dying seconds of the game.

On a positive note, however, last night was, ultimately, an absolute joy, the like of which we haven’t experienced in the Champions League since Amsterdam. Qualifying for the knockout stages was a triumph, and I suspect ticked a box that most of us would have scrawled at the start of the season when pondering what a successful campaign would look like. To dump out in such manner a team stocked everywhere you looked with former Woolwich blisters added to the fun. And credit where due – for the third time in a week (albeit ruled out on one occasion by a dubious VAR) our heroes have come from behind to score a winner in the dying seconds, which represents a heck of an improvement from all those lightweight Spurs sides of my youth.

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Spurs 2-0 Everton: Five Tottenham Talking Points

1. Bissouma, and Conte’s Tactical Switch

My Spurs-supporting chum Dave displayed quite the knack for trenchant observation when he summed up our first half as, “A lot of huff and puff.” I’m not sure too much expansion is required there. It made a pleasant change, I suppose, to see our lot start like they meant it and have the lion’s share of possession. And all of them were red of face and positively dripping with willing; but come half-time “huff” and “puff” were about the sum of it.

And I daresay that if left unchecked this rather dull routine, of poking at the Everton penalty area and promptly being repelled, might have gone on all night, but for the intervention of the gods, of all things. The gods of calf injuries, specifically, which was pretty rotten luck on poor old Richarlison, who had clattered around the place in his usual meaty style.  

But off he tottered, and at this point the plot took quite the unexpected turn. Being a simple soul, my immediate reaction on seeing Richarlison exit was to assume that one of Gil or Lucas would be thrust on in his place, to continue with the aforementioned r.d. routine. I mean to say, if one has a contraption, a small part of which snaps off, what could make more sense than to replace it with another identical part?

The Brains Trust, however, were evidently struck with alternative modes of thought, and on gambolled Bissouma, sprightly as you like. At which point, I furrowed the brow and narrowed the eyes, like nobody’s business. A defensive-minded nib for an attack-minded nib did not strike me as the sort of moment of inspiration for which The Big Cheese earns his bulging monthly envelope.

Of course you don’t need me to tell you that far from diminishing our front-foot potency, this rearranging of the pieces proved a tactical masterstroke, swinging the entire affair in our favour. What we lost in a third attacker we more than made up for in just about everyone else on the pitch beetling north at least ten yards, and where once Everton were casually enough knocking back everything we’d sent in their direction, they now flailed a fair bit with more than just a hint of skin-of-the-teeth about their defending.

Most obviously, Bentancur and Hojbjerg were able to pop up in vastly more advanced spots, safe in the knowledge that Bissouma was manning the rear. As if to hammer home this fact, the pair of them combined for our second, in what struck me as possibly the first time since they started playing together that they had both oiled into the final third at the same time.

Similarly, I can barely remember a time since the better days of Dele Alli that we had been graced with the presence of a bona fide midfielder arriving in the penalty area to see what it was all about – and yet there was Hojbjerg, most advanced of the lot, to put the game to bed.

One would need to get into the realm of parallel universes and whatnot to be absolutely sure, but it seems a reasonable bet that neither Bentancur’s little foray down the right nor Hojbjerg’s guest appearance in the area would have come to pass were it not for the fact that Bissouma was on the pitch and sticking to his defensive drill.

Bissouma himself was neat and tidy in what he did – a couple of busy snaffles here and there certainly won over the punters – but it was not so much what he did on the ball that won the day as simply being in existence. That is to say, by simply being on the pitch and in the right area, he got the rest of the machinery clicking.

Now this being the case, I was inclined to hoist Senor Conte up on my shoulders and carry him all the way home, slinging a garland around his neck for good measure. After all, and as mentioned, the Bissouma-for-Richarlison gambit had been a long way down the AANP list of options circa. minute 50, so I was mightily impressed by the chap’s lateral thinking.

And yet when I put to various fellow lilywhites this sentiment of gushing praise for Conte, they have generally greeted me with that funny look I so often get, the visual equivalent of a pat on the head for being innocent and rather simple. Because apparently, to everyone else in N17, the injection of Bissouma had been the most obvious thing in the world! Apparently nobody else even considered the use of Lucas or Gil, on account of their respectively being unfit and waif-like. So, what had struck me as a moment of tactical genius was actually pretty standard fare to the rest of you blighters, but there we go I suppose.

2. Everton Illustrate The Flaws of Conte-Ball

A digression at this point, for I noted in various post-match interviews that assorted members of the Everton mob were glumly pointing out that they felt they should have won. Had they taken either or both of those first half chances, went the gist, they would have fancied their chances.

Now, one sees the logic here, and the hypothetical is a reasonable one – had they been one or two goals up at half-time, there was little from the first half to suggest that we would have come back.

The issue here is that this argument required firstly that they took either of their only two chances – which they didn’t – and secondly that they avoided any defensive mistakes – which they didn’t. They missed both their chances, and Pickford then made a mess of a couple of things for the penalty.

I bring up all this because the Everton approach seemed to the AANP eye to have much about it of the style Conte has had us peddling in pretty much every game so far this season. And while it has worked for us, Everton yesterday illustrated quite how difficult it is to execute properly. It required all chances to be taken in attack, and no mistakes to be made in defence.

By contrast, in the post-Bissouma era yesterday we apparently had something like 8 shots in the 10 minutes immediately after the substitution – which rather relieves the pressure on the forwards. With that approach, one does not need to bury the head in the hands and bawl in frustration at a missed chance, because another one will be along soon enough.

The approach adopted yesterday, of playing higher up the pitch and fashioning numerous chances, seems vastly preferable to the usual Conte way, both to watch and in terms of the odds of actually winning games.

3. Bentancur

I touched earlier upon the positive impact of Bissouma upon the geographic inclinations of Bentancur, but it would be a disservice to the latter to suggest that his good deeds were due solely to the introduction of the former.

Far from it. Bentancur struck me as the standout performer throughout, beavering away aross all blades of turf like nobody’s business and silkily linking things together like it were the most natural thing in the world. The fellow’s passing is neat and tidy when aiding and abetting the defensive mob; but rather more inventive and exciting when given licence to shove on a bit, and both elements were on display yesterday.

Nor is he the sort who’ll quietly slink into the shadows when more robust duties are required. He can consider himself pretty hard done by to have been cautioned, for his tackling was generally in the ‘Firm But Fair’ category throughout, and that yellow card ought not to suggest otherwise.

All of which made it rather appropriate that he was the driving force behind our second goal. His little legs having wheeled away non-stop all game, one understood Harry Kane popping the ball up the flank and simply looking at him expectantly. Where others might have flung skywards an irritated hand or two, Bentancur scuttled after it in precisely the manner he’d scuttled after everything throughout the game. On top of which, he then had the presence of mind to look beyond the more straightforward pass to Sonny, and instead picked out Hojbjerg in an infinitely better position.

4. Doherty

It is perhaps a little mean-spirited, but with Emerson Royal’s domestic suspension still ongoing I found myself absolutely pleading with Matt Doherty to put in a bravura performance that might consign to the annals – or at least to first reserve – the willing but lamentably limited Brazilian.

The first half showing threatened to disappoint. It was not that Doherty was particularly bad, but rather that nobody in lilywhite found their groove. Everton had plenty of numbers back in defence, and whereas Perisic on the other side could resort to crossing with either foot, Doherty’s attacking game comprises one-twos and nifty darts – precisely the sort of fare that Everton’s massed ranks were able to stifle.

However, as with various others, Doherty was able to disengage a shackle or two once Bissouma arrived. Seemingly gripped by a greater spirit of adventure, he made the sort of forward bursts that Emerson will also make; but, crucially, seemed to have a vastly superior grasp of his options once there.

And various elements of his repertoire were duly exhibited. We were treated to runs towards the byline, outside the area; runs infield, to facilitate nifty diagonal passes; and even a couple of shots from inside the area – one of which led to the penalty.

Of course, it might be that Conte issues a very specific set of instructions – positional, distributional or along some other metric – that Emerson follows to the letter and Doherty cannot nail for love nor money. As a layman, however, I struggle to see how anyone of sound mind and pure intention would resort to Emerson over Doherty again, after seeing yesterday’s performance and comparing it to the countless maddening displays by the Brazilian.

5. Kane

As ever, it is easy to take for granted that rotter Harry Kane, particularly when his goals are of the scruffy ilk (or penalties – which even then does him a disservice, because despite the midweek miss I don’t think I’ve seen a better penalty-taker in all my puff). But when Kane hits something like his top form he becomes quite the specimen, and at the moment he appears to be doing precisely that.

His most recent goals may indeed have been three penalties and one off the shoulder, but there were moments yesterday that prompted a knowing grin to spread across the AANP map, for the evidence points to a fellow who is reaching the peak of his powers and is fully aware of it. In particular, his volley of a ball that dropped across his body and from the heavens, was a thing of some wonder, being the sort of technique that would have resulted in mere mortals shanking the thing off towards the corner flag, and quite possibly have splaying a limb or two about the place.

There was also a spin-and-shot in the second half, which deserved better than arrowing straight down the gullet of the goalkeeper, but which again served notice of the chap’s current sharpness.

For all his talents, I am struck just about every game by how bad his control is (witness his first touch in the build-up to our second, when the ball bounced off his frame as if hitting a wooden door), and at times this has extended to rather ungainly, bobbling attempts to dribble that probably seem a terrific idea in his head but manifest as clumsy stumbles into traffic. Both yesterday and midweek, however, Kane even seemed to hit upon the art of close-control dribbling, beating one man and nutmgegging another before popping off a shot yesterday, to add to his run past four defenders that earned a penalty on Wednesday.

All of which glosses over the fine creative work he does when he drops deeper. As mentioned, his initial touch in the build-up to our second goal yesterday was clunky in the extreme, but once he had the dashed thing under control his creative juices were up and away, feeding Bentancur with just the right weight, into space rather than into feet and in the process doing much to ease the nerves of those final few minutes.

While the first half was something of a struggle, the combination of incisive attacks and controlled possession made for vastly more enjoyable viewing in the second, and added to the promise of the midweek Frankfurt game, it all has a bit of excited chatter about AANP Towers that perhaps, finally, our lot might just have started to click.

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Spurs 3-2 Eintracht Frankfurt: Four Tottenham Talking Points

1. Hojbjerg

Hojbjerg seems to be a chappie who divides opinion amongst the better half of North London. The Brains Trust evidently rate him, as they keep him out there every available minute, but if the baying mob ever need someone in whom to stick the knife and give it a twist, the initials P.E.H. are rarely far from the lips.

This can at least partly be explained by the fact that he rarely gets the more glamorous assignments. While Sonny is belting volleys so hard they rip the net from its moorings, poor old Hojbjerg’s matchday highlights tend to occur in locations such as the halfway line, obscured by flailing limbs from all sides and typically taking take the form of an ungainly lunge to prevent catastrophe befalling in three passes time.

It is a measure of the aplomb with which he carried out the most menial tasks going that Hojbjerg managed to catch the AANP eye as one of the night’s premier cast members. For make no mistake, this was not a victory fashioned from a solid back-three. Far from it. This was a win built upon the occasional clicking of our various attacking parts – the defence appeared generally to be using a completely different playbook. In fact, if anything the defence seemed oddly intent upon sabotaging the whole thing at every opportunity, and without too much subtlety either.

Step forward Master Hojbjerg, who from the off made clear he wasn’t in the market for any defensive clownery. While those around – or, more specifically, behind – him bumped into each other and played fast and loose with possession, Hojbjerg seemed to take it upon himself as a matter of personal pride that no individual duel would be lost, and for good measure any loose ball would be seized.

On top of which, the sound fellow also identified the value in adding his presence to our attacks, and could regularly be spotted tagging along as our heroes motored over halfway and towards the Frankfurt net.

Indeed, such was his daring in this regard that he even managed to do that for which we’ve been crying out from our right wing-backs all season, viz. scuttling past a couple of opponents on the right, reaching the byline and delivering the perfect pass, in teeing up Sonny for his wonder-strike.

There’s an important asterisk to shove in at this point, for it should not be considered that this assist was the sole contribution of the man, nor that for this reason alone has he earned top billing for the day at AANP Towers. Had he simply done his best Emerson Royal impression at this juncture and slowed to a stop before knocking the ball into the nearest defender and frantically waving his arms, Hojbjerg’s would still have been a standout display. His cross for Sonny simply added a little garnish, to a performance that was otherwise drenched in sweat and lactic acid.

2. Sessegnon

Fans of A-listers are no doubt demanding to know when the acclaim for Sonny and Kane will kick in, but next on the roster is young Sessegnon.

Following the Hojbjerg example, Sessegnon made sure he carried out all the dull admin work, diligently tracking his man and dangling an appropriate leg, and generally adopting a risk-free approach to life when in his own half that some of his more experienced associates might have done well to ape.

But it was when revving up the engine and hurtling off towards the Frankfurt goal that Sessegnon really caught the eye. It is hardly a secret that The Conte System involves frequent knowing nods towards the wing-backs when on the front-foot, so it was a joy to see 50% of those wing-backs taking the hint and hitting the final third at a fair old lick at every opportunity.

Sessegnon created the headed chance for Richarlison in the opening knockings; weighted a lovely pass for one of Sonny’s saved chances; wormed his way into two clear goalscoring opportunities himself; and, while the record books will simply gloss over the fact without so much as a blot of ink, his head of steam into the Frankfurt area handily lured away the last remaining defender, which allowed Sonny the space to spank home his second.

Those who know AANP best will be aware that I’ve generally regarded young Sessegnon with a rather stern and unforgiving eye, but that same knowledgeable mob would also attest that I’m nothing if not fair – and if the young whelp plans on making a habit of performances like this he’ll be most welcome to pull up a perch and enjoy a splash of the good stuff at my expense.

3. Sonny and Kane

The murmur around the place at about the hour mark was that this might have been the best our lot have played all season.

(Of course, it couldn’t last, and despite not adding the fourth goal that would have sewn the thing up, they rather regressed somewhat as the game wore on, in much the style of a mob who had just added a fourth goal and sewn the thing up. On top of which, they somehow managed to make playing against ten men look like playing against twelve, which had me clutching at my fellow man in alarm on more than one occasion; but our lot will persist in making the hardest possible work of things.)

Back to the good times, and before and after half-time it would be no exaggeration to say that at times our lot absolutely purred. Key to this, it struck me, was that, for possibly the first time this season, Sonny and Kane simultaneously found something like their groove. To date it seems to have been one or t’other. On Tuesday, it was both. On top of which Richarlison was as eager as ever, all elbows and upper-body strength, generally making himself a nuisance to opponents and a most useful accomplice to teammates.

I banged on rather interminably at the weekend about how Son’s powers are reduced considerably when he drops deep and tries to hold up or link play, as opposed to a far more potent deployment at the apex of things. Against Frankfurt however, he was restored to his former glories. The ball was generally pinged towards the vicinity of Kane, handily attracting Frankfurters to him like moths to a flame, and Sonny raced off into the wide open expanses ahead.

It brought about two goals and numerous other glorious moves, the sort that decency really demanded ought to have resulted in further additions to the scoreline. And various other supporting cast members, no doubt inspired by what they saw, were moved to contribute in their own specific ways. As mentioned, Hojbjerg and Sess contributed to Son’s second; and even Emerson, otherwise as fat-headed as ever, pinged the pass into Kane that set up Sonny for our first of the night.

As mentioned, Kane seemed to have the Frankfurt defence on the fabled piece of string about which the N17 faithful love to sing, manoeuvring them in whichever direction he fancied in order to release his chums. This seemed to be the tactic of choice, and was working a treat; so you can picture my surprise when Kane took it upon himself to set off on the charge and stumble his way past four defenders before being bunged to the ground. Now admittedly this was not Ginola vs Barnsley in ‘99, having about it more clunk than class, and owing a certain debt of gratitude to the good old-fashioned ricochet.

Nevertheless, it was a heck of a run for the chap, who had a look in his eyes that said “I will not be beaten (unless anyone touches me in the area, in which case I’m hitting the deck pronto”). In a season that has oddly failed to come alight to date, that run by Kane, coupled with Son’s volley, provided the biggest hint yet that our forward line might be about to spring into life.

4. Gil and The All-Action-No-Plot Finale

As mentioned, having been well in control, our lot contrived to very nearly throw the whole blasted thing down the pan in the utterly bizarre final ten or so.

As the hour mark came and went, and despite my imploring yowls from afar, those on the pitch resolutely stuck to the approach of complacently mooching from side to side rather than hammering away at the Frankfurt goal. Even when Frankfurt were reduced to ten, the party line seemed to be to conserve energy for future fights.

Our Glorious Leader can take some part of the blame for this too, the move to replace half the outfield players bringing about a noticeable dip in standards. (One understands in theory the decision to take off Dier when on a yellow card, but it nevertheless struck me as an ill thought-through gambit, resulting as it did in the dreaded combination of Emerson and Royal on the right side of defence.)

With the urgency visibly draining away from our mob, it was utterly predictable that Frankfurt should pull one back – via the usual dreadful contribution from Emerson – leaving the entire viewing public to endure major coronary episodes, right up to the final kick of the game.

In the midst of all this poor old Bryan Gil was flung on. As cameos go it was about as entertaining as they came, albeit revealing nothing we didn’t know before: the lad is a box of tricks, and boasts not an ounce of muscle on his frame. Each of these aspects were illustrated for all to see, as he twisted a succession of defenders inside out before being clattered out of the way by one whose patience had run out.

The whole episode of the second penalty was rather a lot to take in, featuring as it did a Gil run being abruptly terminated when he forgot to take the ball with him; after which a Frankfurt johnnie rather charmingly waited until everyone had vacated the defence before gifting it back to him; at which point he seemed set to dribble past everybody who came within ten yards of him; before being upended so that Kane could belt the penalty off into the High Road.

Gil might still have had his moment of glory, when Kane had the opportunity to roll him the ball for a tap-in; but, seemingly convinced that what his failed penalty had lacked was even more power, Kane absolutely blasted the cross towards the poor chap, who produced a horizontal leap that looked mightily impressive, but was ultimately of little value given his failure to be eight feet tall.

Thus we ended the night high on action and pretty empty on plot, as is our way. Still, the improvement in attacking interplay and numerous clear chances created – without resorting to sitting back and countering – bodes very well. On top of which, the pre-match consensus had been that a win, delivered in any manner, was crucial – so for all the late madness, this ultimately was a job well done.

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Arsenal 3-1 Spurs: Four Tottenham Talking Points

1. Tactical Set-Up

Even the most committed creature of habit could learn a thing or two from Our Glorious Leader, who reacted to all the noise about playing a midfield three by sticking his fingers in his ears and scrawling ‘3-4-3’ across his teamsheet for the umpteenth consecutive game.

‘Twas the usual suspects then, in the usual formation – and funnily enough with the usual outcome, as our lot spent the opening twenty minutes penned back in and around our own area, looking longingly at all the possession the other lot were churning through.

Show me a nib who enjoys watching that sort of thing and I’ll show you a chappie who should go and boil his own head, because it makes for pretty ghastly viewing. The opposition hog the damn thing; their every pass feels like a prelude to something ominous; on top of which our defence is so deep that the slightest miscalculation is pretty much guaranteed to gift a goal to the foe (as Lloris helpfully demonstrated). Needless to say, watching it unfold blow by blow had the heart fairly racing along in a manner that would have even the most upbeat cardiologist chewing a nervous lip.

Nerve-shredding stuff to observe then, but as Senor Conte would presumably point out, if done properly it does tend to work. For all the prodding and probing, Woolwich only broke through in that first half via a long-range pop, and in the second via a goalkeeping mistake (I artfully dodge the 10 vs 11 activity). That at least would presumably be the gist of the argument. I’m not sure too many juries would be swayed, but there we go.

The argument would continue that our lot sprang into life on the counter attack enough times in that first half to have scored more than just the one – and towards that point I’m a bit more inclined to clink glasses and offer a friendly nod. There were a few occasions on which our front-three set off on a scamper, and but for a careless final ball would have been through on goal.

But even so, it’s all a bit thick, no? One can only hold one’s breath and hope that the opposition foul things up for so long, what? If one were feeling particularly unkind one might suggest that the whole setup is simply a more polished version of the utter dirge that was peddled under Jose. Opportunities were there on the break, and on another day we might have led by half-time, but as under Jose the strategy relies a little too heavily on both flawless defending and pretty damn clinical finishing.

We sit within the Top Four, so fans of this sort of stuff would have a pretty compelling point if they told me to shove off and take my bleating with me. Nevertheless, here at AANP Towers we would be whistling a lot more gaily if the mantra were to win games by controlling possession and whizzing along a dashed sight closer to the opposition area.

Having gone on a bit about the doom and gloom side of things, I probably ought to mention that, given the rather tough hand they’d been dealt, Messrs Hojbjerg and, in particular, Benancur, made a pretty decent fist of things in the midfield two. Every Bentancur involvement seemed to end with him winning the ball or locating a chum – or, indeed, doing both, as happened at the start of the move that led to our penalty. One sympathised with their plight, being but two men in a midfield swarming with Woolwich goons; and one cast a few longing glances towards the forms of Bissouma and Skipp on the bench; but this defeat was not for lack of good, honest perspiration from H. and B.

2. Emerson

No such comforting words and bobbish sentiment for Master Royal however. That dashed pest ought to be slung out onto the streets and given a good old-fashioned thrashing.

It occurred to me that there was something of a parallel between his character arc and that of England’s resident clot, Harry Maguire, vs Germany the other night – in that neither were too bad until the moment they were very bad indeed.

For most of the game Emerson did the sort of stuff we now expect Emerson to do. He galloped forward gamely enough, and then failed to produce any decent output when given the opportunity, his crosses being blocked for a corner or sailing beyond any souls in lilywhite. This being Emerson, and his bar being low, the AANP reaction was simply to roll the eyes, mutter a choice curse and then see what would happen next. It was pretty much standard fare.

And in fact, at one point in the first half, he made one of the better tackles of his entire Spurs career, inserting a well-timed foot when I think Gabriel Jesus went off on a jink. If he cannot offer anything useful in attack he might as well provide something in defence, or so goes the theory, so by the time the second half rolled around he was in pretty solid ‘6 out of 10’ territory.

However, there then followed his red card, which judging by the current internal mood might well prove to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, in what legal bods might term the case of “AANP’s Patience vs Emerson Royal”.

No doubt one or two hardy souls will protest that a yellow card would have sufficed, to which the usual AANP line is drearily trotted out, about not being daft enough to give the referee a choice to make in the first place.

And “daft” really doesn’t do the chap justice, for this was about as fat-headed a move as I’ve ever seen. There couldn’t have been less threat if the Woolwich lad had curled up in a ball to take a nap. He was oiling off towards his own corner flag for heaven’s sake! Nor was it the case that tempers had already flared and shoves been exchanged., or any of that sort of jolly guff.

Martinelli had generally led Royal a merry dance the whole afternoon, which admittedly is the sort of sinister sequence of events that might prompt a tantrum from amongst the younger AANP nephews and nieces, but for it to prompt a professional footballer to stamp on the ankle of an opponent makes the brain sizzle a bit.

The silver lining of this nonsense is that Royal will now be legally barred from entering the pitch for another three games, and opportunity knocks for Doherty, Spence, Perisic, Sessegnon, Kulusevski, Lucas, Tanganga or frankly anyone else who fancies a stab at beetling up and down the right for a while. Simply being there would be sufficient to reach the standards set by Royal; any further input would class as an improvement. Safe to say I’m rather fed up to the gills with that chap.

3. Lloris Mistake

Monsieur Lloris, of course, has a vastly larger stash of goodwill stocked up, and he would have grasped at great clumping handfuls of the stuff (possibly dropping some) after today’s faux pas.

A funny old oeuf, is Lloris, in that despite being about as loyal as they come, and having loitered about the corridors for longer than anyone else in the place, he is not necessarily revered as one of our heroes. This is hardly a scientific and robust, evidence-driven conclusion, but I get the sense that most of lilywhite persuasion are generally happy enough with him, but harbour a reservation or two. The sort of chappie about whom not too many tears would be shed if he biffed off and a half-decent newbie were unearthed.

In general, his shot-stopping has been top notch and his handling a touch squiffy. Today, however, his were a pretty basic couple of errors in the shot-stopping sector, and on a stage on which we needed the experienced sorts to bring their A-games.

First in padding out the shot centrally rather than off to the sides, and then in making a heck of a mess of the follow-up shot, Lloris put us in a bit of a spot.

For what it’s worth, I rather fancied us to equalise again when 11 vs 11, and Lloris alone was not at fault for our falling behind – the sluggish start to the second half was very much a collective effort. But dash it, that was pretty basic fare, and while one ideally one would rather not concede at all, if it has to happen I would much rather the other lot were made to work their socks off for the privilege.

4. Waving The White Flag

As mentioned, at 2-1 and while fully staffed, the AANP mood was still hopeful enough. “More of the first half routine” was pretty much the chorus on the lips – until the third goal went in. At that point, the odds no doubt lengthened, but hope still spluttered along. A second goal for our lot in the last few minutes would have caused the nerves to flutter amongst the Woolwich mob, what?

You can picture AANP’s displeasure, therefore, when Our Glorious Leader effectively threw in the towel with a good twenty or so minutes remaining. The swapping of Lenglet for Sanchez one could abide, in isolation; but the removal of Richarlison and Sonny, for various assembled defenders, left none in the galleries in any doubt. Conte conceded this one.

And I don’t mind admitting that I frowned at that. Might have folded the arms and pursed the lips a bit too. I’m of a vintage that waits all week (or however long) to see our lot play, and then expects maximum effort from every one of the blighters until the final toot. If they’ve done their jobs properly they should be collapsing in puddles on the ground at full-time, and scraped up in wheelbarrows by the support staff. Having the manager effectively signal that they can simply give up with twenty minutes remaining, against Woolwich of all teams, does not sit well around these parts.

The argument will presumably run that there are games every couple of days, and Lenglet, Richarlison, Sonny et al will be needed for the CL on Wednesday. All of which makes sense – but at the same time, throwing in the towel did not seem right. It’s not really cricket. Perhaps one or two might have been withdrawn, but whilst still maintaining some sort of attacking threat (flinging Gil up at the apex, to offer some pace alongside Kane, for example).

One continues to trust Conte, of course, but that does not preclude criticism of the chap. This was a pretty unpleasant end to a thoroughly unpleasant afternoon.

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