Tag: Hugo Lloris

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Spurs match reports

Spurs 2-0 Man Utd: Six Tottenham Talking Points

1. Sarr

Not to be uncharitable to Oliver Skipp – as honest a bean as ever trod the hallowed turf – but when tasked with recalling his contribution to last week’s affair I drew a blank for an uncomfortably long time, before a single word floated to mind: ‘nondescript’.  

The news that young Master Sarr had inherited his berth for this one was therefore met with a raised eyebrow of intrigue in this neck of the woods. Certainly, the mood around these (and, as I understand, many other) parts had been that while Bissouma and Maddison were doing all their respective necessaries, and with flying colours, a job opening was presenting itself for the final part of that midfield triumvirate. Mid-game (last weekend) there had been a few understandable yelps for Lo Celso; give it a few months and the knees will weaken considerably when Bentancur bobs back into view; but I was as curious as the next fellow to see what Sarr might bring.

And to his credit, the young egg brought a decent-sized sackful of the good stuff. Admittedly in the first half hour or so he seemed to be peddling an Oliver Skipp impression – working hard but to little great effect – but for this he could be excused, as Bissouma aside, not too many in lilywhite were having the game of their lives.

Thereafter, however, seemingly struck by the realisation that this stage was actually a pretty good fit for him, he began belting out a few greatest hits. Tackles were won (and as often as not with a spot of additional biff, for meaning), and crisp passes were passed, which meant that he fitted right in with the happy campers all sides of him. That aforementioned triumvirate had a pretty balanced look to it, which might sound like a rather dreary physics experiment but is actually intended as a compliment of the highest order. To Bissouma’s all-action defence-to-attack dribbling, and Maddison’s creativity, one could add decent wedges of energy and intelligence from Sarr.

On top of which he made a difficult finish look pea-shellingly easy. Having already dipped into that well of energy and intelligence to Platt/Scholes/Dele his way into the penalty area at just the right moment, he then managed to keep under control a ball that was both bobbling and moving away from him. Lashed into the net it might have been, but as he swung back the appropriate limb in preparation for his shot, the AANP mortgage was on the ball sailing off into the gods.

Big Ange still seems to be in Test Mode when it comes to identifying the right fit for the starting eleven, but P-M Sarr’s struck me as one heck of an audition for the coming 36 games.

2. Bissouma

As mentioned, however, it was Bissouma and Maddison who again elevated the thing.

Some may have cleared the throat with a spot of indignation at the comparisons to Mousa Dembele being tossed about the place when it comes to Yves Bissouma, but if a fellow is going to collect the ball from his own defenders and then glide past an endless stream of opposing midfielders with little more than a spot of upper-body misdirection, then what else is there to do but draw precisely such comparisons?

A common lament echoing around the walls of AANP Towers last season was that none amongst our midfield number seemed either confident or capable of collecting the ball under pressure, much less shielding it and turning with it and finding nearby chums and whatnot. Close the eyes, and it is not too difficult to conjure up an image of a Skipp, Hojbjerg, Winks or whomever facing their own goal and being bundled out of possession, ensuing catastrophe not far behind.

Bissouma, however, is a different and vastly preferable kettle of fish. Whether receiving the ball just inside his own area or just outside the opposition’s, he seems to exhibit a pretty minimal level of concern either way, and just gets on with the business of dipping a shoulder and easing his way around swinging opposition limbs. It is an absolute joy to behold. Presumably there will come times when this approach backfires and Bissouma comes to look something of a chump, but frankly he is already amassing a decent wodge of credit in the bank.

The newly-signed misfit of last season is unrecognisable. If he really were unable to master Conte’s tactics, then I rather scorn the tactics and the man who oversaw them, because Bissouma has twice in a week looked comfortably the best player on the pitch.

3. Maddison


And Maddison was not far behind him. At times in the first half, and then regularly in the second, he seemed to delight in first demanding the ball and then strutting around with the thing once it had been sent his way.

Nor was it just for show. Be it a pass or a dribble, Maddison seemed pretty adept at picking an option that caused a fair amount of consternation – or blind panic – amongst the United bods. He may not have scored or created a goal today, but his contribution was considerable, not least in that glorious period after half-time when our heroes really had the other lot against the ropes and gave them a good old-fashioned pummelling.

I particularly enjoyed seeing Maddison share a midfield with one Christian Eriksen, the last creative spark to bound about the place. A regular grumble about the latter was that he was a bit too polite about things when in lilywhite, happy to let others grab the mic as it were, while he sidled off into the background.

By contrast, Maddison seems always to be popping up about the place demanding to be involved. I suppose strictly speaking his official position is on the left-ish side of the centre, but the net result seems to be that if the ball is in play then he is merrily bobbing towards it, happy to take on the responsibility of pulling a few of the key strings.

4. Porro

Not that it was all a bed of roses in midfield. As well as Sarr, the other tweak from last week’s line-up was Porro for Emerson, in that right-back-cum-who-the-hell-knows role. It was not Master P.P.’s finest hour and a half. That whole collect-the-ball-on-the-half-turn-outside-one’s-own-area gambit may look a whizz when Yves Bissouma casually unveils it, but Porro’s attempts were rather more on the ham-fisted side of things. Whether it was lack of technique, lack of awareness or lack of eyes in the back of his head, it soon became evident that popping the ball to Porro outside our area was a manoeuvre absolutely dripping in risk.

In truth I felt rather sorry for the young nib. I mean, there he was brought to these shores under the beady eye of one chappie, who then exploded in rage and biffed off, to be replaced by another chappie with vastly different ideas about the way of things. Because lest we forget, Porro was beginning to demonstrate himself to be one of the better wing-backs about the place. Play a vaguely conventional system, and ask him to bomb up the right flank, and he’s your man. Be it crosses, cute passes or pretty lethal finishing, his final third armoury was well-stocked.

And instead, he’s now being asked to tuck inside and spend a goodish amount of time pretending to be three-fifths of a defensive midfielder. As with Emerson last week, he seems to be a fairly capable square peg being asked to rearrange the features in order to squeeze into a round hole. Porro, like Emerson, is pretty decent at what he does best, but this system seems to ask him to do something rather different.

5. Vicario

A successful afternoon’s work for young Signor Vicario. Opinions ranged a bit last week – I was rather taken by his calmness on the ball; others seemed to resent being driven to the brink of coronary failure by it – but this time around we can probably agree that, like or loathe the approach, he did not put too many feet wrong.

His presence certainly adds a pretty natty line of operation to our defensive setup. Whereas in the days of Lloris, on seeing our lot attempt to play out from the back the anthem on the AANP lips was typically some variant of “Just clear the bally thing, dash it,” nowadays I watch on with a curiosity bordering on admiration.

Vicario seems awfully comfortable in possession. Heck, I rather fancy that if necessary he could do a better job than Porro in that spot just outside the penalty area. Well maybe not, but you get the gist. Picking a pass from within the six-yard box seems to be just another unspectacular part of the day-job for the fellow. This brave new era will certainly take a bit of getting used to, but having a goalkeeper as available for a spot of keep-ball as any of the outfield mob certainly makes things a few notches easier.

Vicario also had a handful of saves to make, many of which were straight down his gullet, but one or two of which involved a spot of the old spring-heeled action. And again, say what you want about the aesthetics of it all, but he did precisely what was required in each instance. For all the leaping around in the latter stages, I personally thought that his low block in the early moments, when dashing off his line to face Rashford, was the pick of the bunch.

Still too early to opine wisely either way, but this at least was reassuring stuff.

6. Ange-Ball

So another day, and another triumph for Ange-Ball. Not just in terms of the result, but very much in terms of the performance too. As with last week, and the various pre-season jaunts, this was something that brought the joy back to watching our lot.

The usual caveats apply – we might have been well behind before we really got the hang of the thing; the whizzy football was produced in fits and starts; Richarlison still seems to be playing the wrong sport – but this was often marvellous stuff to take in.

Worth bearing in mind too that we are, in patches, purring away after only about six or seven weeks of the new regime. The draw last week was against a side that has had a settled and organised way of doing things for a season; the win today against a Top Four team whose manager has been in situ for over a year. Frankly, the thought of where our lot might be after a year of Ange makes me rather giddy.

Oddly enough, one of the moments that really left its mark over in this corner of the interweb came from the size nines of Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, a chap who has generally been shovelled well off into the background since Our Glorious Leader came rumbling into view (to the extent that this might have been his final appearance in lilywhite, Atletico-infused rumours doing the rounds).

In the dying embers, Hojbjerg, having been brought on to wise-old-head the game to its conclusion, popped up in a right-back sort of spot – and I mean a conventional right-back spot, rather than the new-fangled midfield-ish one. From out of nowhere, Hojbjerg produced a rather thrilling turn to leave his man groping at thin air, and for a moment he seemed to be away. The pitch opened up ahead of him; momentum suddenly shifted onto the front-foot; that opponent was still groping away in the wrong direction. Opportunity knocked.

But Hojbjerg, being Hojbjerg, responded to this new and exciting possibility by picking the option that I suppose made him so undroppable under Jose and Conte, and put his foot on the ball before spinning around and passing the damn thing backwards. And one understands – the game was almost won and the lead well established, so playing it safe would bring its reward.

But the whole episode jarred rather, precisely because it was so out of keeping with the 180 minutes of Ange-Ball we have witnessed to date. This current Tottenham vintage turns its man and doesn’t look back, but puts its head down and races forward, or at the very least pings off a pass in a northerly direction for some well-intentioned colleague to do the racing forward instead. Watching Hojbjerg default to safety-first seemed to ram home the fact that he was one of the last of the old era, while all around him were Bissoumas and Maddisons and the like, for whom receiving the ball was basically a prompt to go wandering off on the attack.

All a rather long-winded way of saying that this newly-adopted style is absolutely ripping stuff, nascent and rough around the edges though it might be, and I for one cannot wait for the next instalment.  

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Spurs match reports

Villa 2-1 Spurs: Three Tottenham Talking Points

1. The Tactics

Ryan Mason still seems to be receiving a free pass from great swathes of our support. For reasons I don’t particularly fathom, truth be told, but there we go, and I voiced a few of the yays and nays around him last week, so won’t bother going into that again.

This week, his grand masterplan was a dastardly plot to beat Aston Villa’s high line by releasing Sonny with passes from deep, to sprint off into the wide open spaces and make merry.

Here at AANP Towers we spotted three critical flaws.

Firstly, the bally thing just didn’t work. Say about it what you like, and who knows, perhaps the Villa back-four spent the afternoon close to tears with the stress of it all – but the facts are that this approach brought us zero goals. In fact, this approach brought us zero chances, because every blasted time we tried it, Sonny or Richarlison stuffed up their lines and strayed offside.

Once or twice would be forgivable – “teething problems’, would no doubt have been the gist of the exchange amongst the Brains Trust on the sidelines – but when it came to minute 96 and Sonny was yet again caught on the wrong side of the red line, there was nothing for it but to sink the old head into the hands and hope that when reincarnated I come back as something less exasperating than being a Spurs fan.

And when I screech that it happened ‘every time’, this is not a spot of hyperbole, thrown in for dramatic effect. It just happened over and over again. Our heroes simply didn’t learn. Richarlison one understands might want to sneak in a headstart; but goodness me Sonny ought to have worked out that an extra six inches or so were not really necessary when blessed by nature with a pair of size sevens as spring-heeled as his. Surely, ran the train of thought, if Sonny started level he would still have had a decent chance of outsprinting the Villa mob over fifteen yards or so?

Secondly, even if this tactic had born a spot of occasional fruit, one would have thought a Plan B might have been tried at some point too, or even a Plan A, Version 2. Mix things up a bit, what?

Take that lad Porro, out on the right. A flawed sort of chap no doubt, but if he brings one asset to the table it’s his capacity to sling in a decent cross. One might have thought that Mason’s pre-match pearls of wisdom might have included the suggestion that every now and then we keep the Villa mob on their toes by feeding Porro, sticking an extra body or two in the area and seeing what might happen. Maybe just once or twice.

But the evidence of the eyes indicated that Mason & Chums were not having any of it. As far as “Villa (Away)’ was concerned, the strategy was evidently to be “Beat the offside trap, or nothing”. No matter that it failed the first half-dozen times, for a good hour it was our one and only idea.

Thirdly, the whole setup made for a football that was pretty dreadful to watch, from a lilywhite perspective. After a whole season of games, pretty much every one of which has made the eyes bleed, it takes some doing to find a brand new method of boring to tears the watching masses, but this Low-Block-And-Beat-The-Offside-Trap approach managed it.

Central to the approach seemed to be the mad idea to just let Villa have as much possession as they wanted, which as a year of Jose proved, even if successful sucks every ounce of joy out of the thing. Whenever we did stumble upon possession, our heroes seemed strangely unable to master the art of the six-yard pass, picking out opposition players a little too frequently for comfort (and to be fair, young Mason can hardly take the fall for this one; this is just down to the players’ own ineptitude).

And of neat triangles or the whizzy stuff that lights up the eyes and quicken the pulse, there was none. It was just left to Kane, or Lenglet, or whomever to try sticking the ball behind the Villa back-line for Sonny to dash onto and over-complicate everything before the flag went up anyway.  

So in short, this plan brought no success (and did not even get as far as sticking within the rules of the game long enough to gauge whether it might bring any success); had no alternative; and was awful to watch. The ‘Give it to Mason’ campaign, as much as there is one, will need a few additional compelling arguments before AANP is swayed.

After an hour of this nonsense however, Mason had the good grace to bang his head against the nearest wall and try something different. Richarlison was relieved from duty, Kulusevski was stationed out on the right, and for two minutes or so the entire collective bucked up their ideas a bit. Irritating, then, that that particular balloon was punctured by their second goal, after which both sides pretty much shrugged their shoulders and were happy to bump into each other and shout for the remainder.

As if to really twist the knife, the only time our heroes showed any genuine urgency was for approximately five minutes of injury-time at the death, after Kane’s penalty. If they’d bobbed about their place with that same meaning and dash from minute one I’d have been all for it. Our lot might have had a decent stab at the win, for a start, and we the viewing public might have had something about which to make a racket. It might even have added a bit of gusto to the “Mason In! (Permanently)” campaign.

But when they only muster that energy for added time at the end of the ninety, I’m afraid they won’t get much more than icy glares and a few stinging words of rebuke from these parts.

2. Kulusevski

As mentioned, just about the only time things picked up, added time aside, was during a brief, post-substitution surge. Bissouma looked game, possibly just excited to be on a real pitch again, but the lightning rod for that halcyon ten minutes seemed to be Kulusevski.

He beavered away in that curious manner of his, bludgeoning past people in that ungainly fashion that suggests that while he was not born to be a footballer he has nevertheless hit upon something so might as well keep going until told otherwise.

It was already a big day for trying the same old trick over and over again, but whereas springing the offside trap had failed miserably, Kulusevski’s party-trick of chopping back inside his full-back (again, in the ungainly manner of someone who prefers football not to involve a ball) seemed to keep working, no matter how many warnings his opponent had.

With the first few steps of Operation Kulusevski working so well, it was slightly maddening that the final element kept missing the mark, but life – particularly in Season 22/23 – is like that, what? Where last season the young specimen would cut in on his left and either find the net or hang the ball up for an arriving surge at the back post, this time around the ball has tended to fly off into the galleries, leaving all in the vicinity with hands on heads and a general chorus of “If Only…” echoing about the place.

There’s no real knowing what zany idea Mason will magic up next week, but having injected the faintest murmur of a pulse into a collective that had otherwise looked for all the world ready for a toe-tag and body-bag, one wonders if Kulusevski might be involved from the start next week.

3. Forster

In the great Lloris vs Forster Debate, AANP comes down pretty heavily on the side of the latter. Monsieur Lloris has played a fine old innings, no doubt, but in the last season or three the old bean has seemed to lose the faculties somewhat, so if he is lofted on the shoulders and carried off into the sunset, he has my blessing. ‘All hail that Foster chappie, at least for the time being’, is very much my motto.

As such, having nailed my colours to this particular mast, I rather find myself bending over backwards to applaud Forster’s every contribution – never missing an opportunity in so doing to pointedly highlight how Lloris would never achieve such glories – and excusing his mishaps. And there were arguments in both camps yesterday.

For a start, and in the debit column, Forster made a couple of very good saves. One in particular, in the first half, involved some of that quick-reaction stuff, which always looks good when replayed from multiple angles. It was a low shot, well within his vicinity, but involved him bringing the entire frame down towards the dirt in double-quick time. This he achieved within the necessary timescale, managing to scoop back a ball that seemed almost behind him. Buoyed by feverish anti-Lloris sentiment, I applauded as if he had taken a bullet for the Pope.

I also noted that at one point a corner was hoisted into the general mess of limbs that is the penalty area, and where Lloris tends to flap around in such situations, Forster got such a meaty paw onto the thing that it flew off towards somewhere near halfway. Again, the reaction at AANP Towers was mightily overblown.

The whole propaganda machine was thus pootling along pretty smoothly until that second half free-kick. Even I can admit that Forster did not really cover himself in glory at that juncture.

The shot may have ended up at the opposite end to that which he had opted to patrol, but still. It was not in the top corner for a start, and more pertinently, he actually did the hard part well enough, transferring himself from right to left in good time. All that was left was to bring that same meaty paw back into play, and bat the thing off into the gay old meadows of Villa Park. Instead, he got himself in a bit of a tangle, and batted the thing into the roof of the net.

Now my Spurs-supporting chum Ian, not being one to hold back on a spot of constructive criticism, duly acted as judge, jury and executioner and delivered an instant take on Forster’s attempts, and not a complimentary one.

My immediate reaction was to point out that at least he tried to save the thing; Lloris, I inevitably argued, would have stood rooted to the spot and watched. And Forster, in his defence, did have a lot of bodies around which to peer. Failing to slap the ball away may be a flaw; not being able to see straight through the human body is not.

But nevertheless, he might have done better. Coming at a time when we were just beginning to impose ourselves, it did much to kill off the game too. While there’s no knowing what the hell will be going on at the club next season, the AANP vote would be for a younger, shinier upgrade on Lloris to be unwrapped pretty sharpish; and for Forster to remain in situ as this season, backing up when required.

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Spurs match reports

Newcastle 6-1 Spurs: Five Tottenham Talking Points

1. Happy Birthday AANP Senior

This weekend was the 90th birthday of my old man, AANP Senior, which is a solid innings by most metrics.

Having seen our lot lift all but two of the trophies in their history, and seen in their entirety the lilywhite careers of Messrs Greaves and Kane, I classify the aged relative as something approaching Spurs royalty – so it seemed a bit rotten that he should spend his birthday sitting through that garbled nonsense yesterday. But I suppose if we’ve learnt anything it’s that our heroes will repeatedly find new and innovative ways to plumb new depths, what?

(He was pretty philosophical about it though.)

2. The Players

I recall in my younger days one of the female chums giving me a funny look, and possibly patting my head, saying, “There are many, many things wrong with you,” and it was a sentiment that sprung to mind last night as I recollected the day’s events and tried to make sense of them. For there was not really any single issue that sprung to mind. In fact, one cannot think back to the game without about eighteen different problems immediately jostling for position at the front of the queue.

But amidst the behind-the-scenes circus currently in full effect at the place, the players certainly contributed to the general spirit of full-blooded incompetence yesterday.

I could bang on all day about Romero waddling around from minute one in his own area with his hands behind his back, and it wouldn’t begin to address the problems in the vicinity – but nevertheless, why the dickens was Romero waddling around from minute one in his own area with his behinds his back? Yes, yes, we all know the handball rule means that merely possessing arms is in some cases a punishable offence, but really. The chap was facing down a fellow about to shoot, the situation seemed to demand a spot of spread-limbed antagonism. Instead of which, Romero made himself as small as possible, the complete opposite of what the impending crisis required. On top of which, this arms-behind-back nonsense had the unhelpful immediate consequence of constricting all his subsequent movements in the adventure, Romero hereafter proceeding about the place with all the freedom of one bound by a straitjacket.

Not that Romero was the sole culprit. Right from kick-off, Dier opted against bringing down an aerial ball when given the time and space to do so, instead heading it first time in a manner that stacked the odds against Sarr, who duly lost it. This may sound a pretty incidental detail, and a lot of the time it wouldn’t amount to much I suppose. But in a way, just carelessly tossing the ball around without too much concern for its eventual whereabouts sums up a lot of what is wrong with the troupe. Put another way, next time someone wonders aloud what is meant by the players lacking a winning mentality, I’ll plant them in front of a screen and show them a clip of Dier aimlessly heading the ball with the air of a fellow who thinks it’s someone else’s problem.

On top of which, it wasn’t quite such an incidental detail, because Newcastle promptly scooped up the thing and opened the scoring.

Perisic reacted to the save from Lloris, immediately prior to the first goal, by taking the sight of the loose ball squirming free as a cue to take his first break of the day. Perisic instead adopted a watching brief, as a Newcastle sort politely shuffled forward to poke the ball into the empty net.

Porro for possibly the second goal (I think, one rather loses count) had the decency to check over his right shoulder for imminent threats, and having clocked one such foe lurking with a spot of menace, reacted to the incoming cross by giving it his best Perisic impression and letting the ball sail past him, seemingly convinced that a strategy of non-interference must eventually come good. To his credit, where Perisic had simply goggled a bit, Porro at least made a perfunctory attempt to appear engaged, by raising an arm to appeal for offside. Pointless of course, and infuriating too, in this age of play continuing so that VAR can sort it out at a later date, but if the drill amongst our lot was to find ever more appalling ways to stuff things up then Porro was fitting right in.

Of course, no abject lilywhite capitulation would be complete without Monsieur Lloris adding his signature move of just not bothering to move at all, and he rolled out one of his best for number three (or was it four?), making zero effort even to stretch out an arm, or even twitch a limb, as the ball sailed past him.

This, of course, is but a selection. Everywhere one looked, there seemed to be one of our heroes stumbling off into some new crisis that only ended with the ball in our net and Eric Dier puffing away angrily as they marched back to starting positions. So, chronic and deep-rooted though the problems at the club may be, the current mob out on the pitch are certainly adding their tuppence worth of hokum to the mix at every opportunity.

3. The 4-3-3

The pre-match announcement of the switch to 4-3-3 struck me at the time as ripping news. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that it raised my level of expectation from ‘Nil’ to ‘A Flicker Of Hope’. I’d been baying for the thing all season after all, the sight of our midfield pair repeatedly being outnumbered and generally cut to ribbons week after week having an oddly discouraging effect upon the juices.

Of course, it’s difficult to measure such things as the success of one formation as compared to another, all sorts of wacky metrics being available in these days of Opta stats and XG and so on and so forth. But it’s seems a fairly safe bet to suggest that most right-minded folk would point to a 5-0 deficit after 20 minutes as evidence that the thing had not quite transpired as an unparalleled success.

So no real quibbling on that front, but nevertheless the whole thing left me rather miffed. Like most things in life, done properly a 4-3-3 would seem a perfectly reasonable way to conduct one’s day-to-day. Somehow however, our lot managed to take a pretty normal state of affairs and turn it into the sort of nightmare to rival a stretch in the flames of Hades.

Now there are a few rummy elements to this. One thing that occurred to me is that the club never waste an opportunity to bleat on about how our lot have one of the best training facilities in the business. As bragging rights go, it’s a peculiar one admittedly, but if it helps bring out the best in the troops then I’m all for it.

However, seeing them scuttle about the pitch yesterday like they’d not previously heard of football, let alone adjusted to the rigours of a 4-3-3, did get me wondering what they hell they’ve been doing all week in those gleaming training facilities. One appreciates that change is always a bit much to stomach, we homo sapiens being creatures of habit and whatnot, but honestly. They began proceedings looking uncertain if they were in the right half of the pitch.

Another challenge that has been widely highlighted is that apparently having a wing-back play at wing-back is hunky-dory, and a full-back play at full-back is tickety-boo; but if a wing-back is every required to play at full-back cracks will appear in the sky and the very fabric of reality will come crashing down.

This seems to be the expert take, and is used to explain why, for example, Perisic was utterly incapable of exhibiting any signs of life when the situation at Goal 1 yesterday required him to extend a leg and poke the ball clear. Wing-backs, after all, are incapable of defending. Similarly, Porro’s inability to jog back alongside the striker on his shoulder was not so much his fault, as a desperate flaw in the system – wing-backs are incapable of defending.

So if that’s the unquestionable truth then I suppose we ought to accept it, but I did occasionally pass a hand over the fevered brow and wonder, as our lot fell apart at the seams, whether anyone had tried training Perisic and Porro – and indeed Romero and Dier – to adapt to this new and mind-boggling setup, viz. The Back Four. In this age in which every baked bean ingested is recorded and every drop of perspiration monitored, I’d have thought they’d have the resource at the gleaming training facility to sit down with a couple of the players and shove a few hours of analysis at them, touching on some of the key do’s and don’ts of the role.

4. Kane

It obviously got rather lost in the mists of general wretchedness knocking about the place, but Harry Kane popped up with a heck of a goal. On another day I would have lit a cigar, been pretty liberal with the bourbon and scrawled some of the best prose going in salute to it. There was a spot of one-touch stuff at the outset, completely out of character with the general sentiment of not-knowing-what-day-of-the-week that had been adopted by one and all, before Kane was released on halfway.

And while his little dribble to beat his man owed much to general bluster and force than any particular finesse, it achieved the objective, and left him to make a left-foot shot that many would have dragged wide.

So well done him, although for how much longer such jolly sentiments are lobbed his way remains to be seen. If he decided to sprint out the door as soon as the whistle blows on the final game of the season, one would understand the sentiment.

However, one point I have begun to mull in my quieter moments, is whether a permanent absence of Kane might work to our benefit. One treads carefully here, dodging the slew of incoming rotten fruit, and picking the words delicately, but the point I’m driving at is that we no longer press from the front, with any real sense of verve or spirit when Kane is leading the line.

Essentially this is because the poor fellow is completely out of puff, having strained every sinew non-stop for about four years under Poch. These days, his top speed is something of a chug, which is more than adequate for most of the tasks on his morning To-Do list – finish with the right foot; finish with the left foot; win a foul; drop deep and ping; finish from outside the box; and so on.

But when it comes to pressing the opposition, Kane is something of a spent force these days. This is entirely his prerogative, so no complaint there; it does, however, prevent the rest of our mob from effecting a high press as a team.

This is a bit of a tangent that probably needs some cove with a screen and some whizzy graphics to do justice to, and if push came to shove I’d certainly keep the fellow in the ranks and let him do his damnedest pretty much any way he pleases. But as well as wing-backs who can’t play full-back, the generally decrepit nature of whichever system we’re peddling does seem to include an inability to shove any pressure on the other lot when in possession at the back.

5. The Running of the Club

Well that Stellini chap has taken the well-trodden path, so no need to bother about him any longer, and poor old Ryan Mason is now faced with the gargantuan task of trying not to devastate his CV before he’s had a chance to write the first entries.

But further up the food-chain, if I have correctly picked up the occasional whisper, it seems that there might just be one or two murmurs of displeasure against one D. Levy Esquire.

If he would stick to the business side, steer well clear of the football side and bring in a few qualified eggs with a good knowledge of the club, AANP would probably be happy enough, in truth. Off the pitch he knows his beans well enough, and if things pootle along well on the pitch then I’m happy not to give him a further thought. But things on the pitch could not really be much worse, which does rather bend the argument a good 180 degrees.

The complete lack of strategy in the pre-Nuno and pre-Conte appointments (as evidenced by shortlists containing all manner of managerial styles) was troubling stuff, and since then it seems like the blighter has stumbled upon a whole series of choices on the football side of things, which, while no doubt well-intentioned, have really piled one steaming mess upon another.

The ominous silence around the managerial situation in recent weeks – bar, bizarrely, a few off-topic lines at the old alma mater last week – may have been just the job in the 1970s, when one waited patiently week to week for news from the club, but these days serves only to infuriate an already pretty restless bunch of natives.

And frankly twenty years at the head of any company strikes me as pretty unhealthy, although I don’t suppose I’d be giving tongue to too many grumbles if we’d picked up some trophies and waltzed into the Top Four with Levy still at the helm.

However, be all that as it may, we appear to be stuck with the chap, for the foreseeable anyway. And in truth, if we could only appoint a manager capable of giving some direction to the current rabble, I’d once again shove Levy from my mind and just enjoy the ride. One understands the calls for the entire useless shower to be shoved out the door and start from scratch; but looking at Villa, Newcastle and, to an extent, Man Utd, turning their fortunes around with only minimal cosmetic surgery, I do still cling to the hope that a competent manager would give a spot of direction to the existing squad.

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Spurs match reports

Everton 1-1 Spurs: Four Tottenham Talking Points

1. The Post-Conte Era

AANP is pretty sharp. The former Commander-in-Chief may no longer have been of the parish, but it couldn’t have been more than an hour or so into proceedings last night when it dawned on me that actually, for all the bluster and announcements, not a dashed thing had changed.

For a start there was the formation. Now one generously acknowledges that, thirty games into a season, one can hardly force a completely revamped model down every available throat, and expect everything to fall into place without so much as a squeak. The newly-installed Brains Trust had had by my reckoning about five days to inspect the troops. So, much though the wretched 3-4-3-featuring-two-defensive-midfielders grates, one understood the logic and waved an accepting – if grudging – hand.

But nevertheless, while tearing down the foundations and creating something completely wacky and new might have been a bit rich, a few nuanced adjustments would have been nice, what? Brave new era, and all that. Would it really have cost the earth, I asked myself, to have rearranged the deck-chairs and including an extra creative soul in midfield? Not that we seem to have any such souls left, but with a bit of jiggery-pokery – and maybe a Pape Sarr – I thought we might see Hojbjerg pushed further forward, or Kulusevski more central, or Kane and Sonny as a front two, or literally anything that indicated that Conte had biffed out the door in deed as well as word.

But nope. The formation was exactly the same. And if that was not enough, the performance ended up being even more Conte-esque than it had been under Conte, which takes some doing.

In fairness, there were patches of play in the first half that weren’t too bad. Everton had obviously got into their heads the ridiculous notion that we were the sort of mob that would fold immediately under questioning, and so spent the opening exchanges charging in a frenzy at whichever of our lot were in possession, lacking only a bayonet to brandish and a war-cry to shriek. And our lot responded pretty impressively, at least at various points between approximately minutes 5 and 25. Whomever was in possession tended to do a quick tap-dance, shimmy around the nearest swinging Everton leg and pop the ball off to a nearby chum, at which point the whole routine began again.

So we looked competent enough in possession, and able to sidestep the Everton press. Most notably to the AANP eye, we moved the ball pretty quickly. One got the sense that Team Stellini had spent their five days barking a few choice phrases celebrating the virtues of the quick pass and one-touch football, because there was a welcome dash of urgency about the place.

On top of which, whether by our design or the accident of Everton being rather narrow, Messrs Perisic and Porro had a few moments of joy up the flanks. Hojbjerg seemed to be having one of his better days in the centre. Kane had a couple of near-ish misses. Rumours of a new-manager bounce were no doubt miles off the mark, but for half an hour or so I at least thought that we might just about edge our relegation-zoned, lowest-scoring-team-in-the-division opponents.

2. The Performance at One-Nil

I should have known better of course. From the latter part of the first half onwards, our lot absolutely stank the place out. Whatever upper hand we might have had early doors was old news by the midway point, and there was not much improvement in the second half.

It took some pretty generous and unsubtle interventions from Everton to get our noses in front, because goodness knows our clueless heroes weren’t going to manage it themselves. First that laddie got himself sent off; but on seeing that our lot hadn’t really taken the hint, and were still scratching their heads a bit, another Everton slab of meat took it upon himself to give us a penalty, just to make sure.

And at that point, I fancy I even allowed myself a smile, which just goes to show one never really learns. The one-nil lead was not really a deal-breaker; but a one-nil lead against ten men with under half an hour remaining struck me as the sort of binge even our lot couldn’t foul up.

Of course, it is a little hard to describe what happened next. One simply stared in disbelief, and rubbed the eyes a few times. After Sheffield United and Southampton – and seemingly every other game we’ve played this season, in truth – it shouldn’t have come as any surprise, and yet this seemed to be one of the worst performances of the lot. By just about any metric available, we managed to let ourselves get comprehensively outplayed by ten men. Even now, 24 hours on, the recollection of it seems to hollow out my insides.

It is tempting to get a bit Shakespearian about things and declare this the worst I’ve ever seen from our lot, but having had my teenage years fashioned by the delights of Francis, Graham and Gross a little perspective is probably in order.

Nevertheless, though, this collective offering – let’s call it The Conte Tribute Act – was down there amongst the absolute dregs. If a chum had suggested to me that with twenty minutes to go against one of the worst teams in the league, and up a man, our lot would choose the option of dropping deep, ceding possession and praying for the final bell, I’d have laughed them out of town and suggested for good measure they had over-indulged in the sauce. And yet our lot did precisely that! Forsooth!

The amateurish passing from the back; the aimless hoicks upfield; the introduction of Davinson Sanchez as a means to shore up the defence; the brainless red card; the continued absence of Danjuma – I’m not one to betray the emotions unnecessarily, but when I tell you that at least one of my lips quivered with despair as I watched matters unfold I rather fancy you get the picture.

3. Son

The rest is mere details. By full-time I was in such a state of shock that I found myself groping blindly towards the drinks cabinet, but at half-time, when thoughts were slightly better ordered, one of the principal points of concern was the latest dithering performance from young Sonny.

The wise old coves have it that form is temporary and class permanent, which is true enough I suppose, but it makes this dip in form one of the longest temporary contracts in living memory.

The poor blighter was dreadful yet again, in just about every area of his game. I admired to an extent his diligence in trying to track back or drop deep to receive the ball, but seeing him trip over his own feet and fall to the dirt upon every contact, I did look skywards and utter a silent prayer or two that he might just relocate to the top of the pitch and stay there. I much prefer the chap playing on the shoulder of defenders and scurrying off towards the opposition goal.

Not that his attacking manoeuvres bore much fruit either, mind. The days of him dipping a shoulder, side-stepping a defender and whipping a shot goalwards seemed pretty distant specks as we watched him shuffle straight into an opposition frame and, more often than not, complete his routine by yet again hitting the turf.

After last night it is admittedly hard to make a case to suggest that Lucas is the answer, but one does cast a longing look or two towards Danjuma on the bench and wonder what on earth that is all about.

4. Lloris

Amongst the bigger decisions our newest Glorious Leader had to make was between the sticks. Absence, of course, makes the heart grow fonder, and Fraser Forster has not been without the occasional flaw, but I did puff the cheeks and think it rather a shame that he was automatically elbowed aside and the red carpet rolled out for Monsieur Lloris.

In Lloris’ defence he did grab a cross or two of the high-and-swirling variety in the first half, which lowered the blood pressure a bit around these parts. However, with the ball at his feet he seemed, as ever, to be not entirely sure of what day it was or which sport he was playing, and there were more sharp intakes of breath than any right-minded nurse would consider healthy whenever our lot tried to play out from the back. An admonishing clip should be aimed around the ear of Romero at this point, for his bizarre inputs into this particular nonsense, but the whole fiasco did have me pining for the return of Forster.

The real blow to the ribs, however, was the goal. The objective viewer would, naturally enough, raise an appreciative eye at the quality of the strike, but at AANP Towers the headline was all about Lloris and that utterly infuriating habit of his, of simply standing and watching, rooted to the spot, as the ball sails past him.

I don’t mind admitting I could have absolutely screamed at him to use his bally hands. Why the dickens does he keep doing this? Adopting the pose of readiness, as if coiled to leap into action, and then, as the crucial moment approaches, instead of leaping as advised, simply swivelling the hips to watch the ball? It happens over and over, and drives me to absolute distraction. What is stopping him from extending the frame and at least broaching the possibility that he might reach it?

It is galling at the best of times, when he is nowhere near the ball; but last night the thing whistled within his wingspan! I’m not sure he even needed to dive in order to reach it, simply extending an arm might well have done the trick. That the ball was travelling at a fair old lick is beyond doubt; but geographically this was no insurmountable challenge.

Utterly bewilderingly, after that utter crate of garbage – and all the other ones we’ve witnessed – we sit fourth in the table, but given the games played and whatnot (and, more pertinently, the utter guff we keep peddling) we’ll be waving that one goodbye pretty sharpish. One can only look onwards, and hope yet again for an upturn on Saturday, but this really is getting a bit thick now, what?

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Spurs match reports

Wolves 1-0 Spurs: Just The One Tottenham Talking Point

The vicissitudes of life mean that AANP is no longer able to watch 3pm games most Saturdays (although, oddly enough, this has barely prevented me from watching our lot in recent years). It does mean, however, that I couldn’t rattle off anything about yesterday’s game beyond the five-or-so minutes offered up by Match of the Day.

1. Forster’s Saves

But as it happens, a heck of a lot of Spurs-supporting angst can still be shoved into five-or-so minutes, if you select the right bits. And the bits that caught the AANP eye were both the goal conceded and also another Wolves effort earlier in the piece (circa minute 55, apparently). The common denominator in these two were that both featured resident goalkeeping giant F. Forster Esq. beating away goalbound efforts.

So far so successful, one might think, and indeed, in a sense, the most basic requirements of the role had been met. After all, there have been a few occasions this season alone on which I’ve subjected Monsieur Lloris to a spot of choice Anglo-Saxon for his failure to master such essentials. But yesterday, Forster waved a meaty paw first at a close-range header from Jiminez, and then at a longer-range hit-and-hope sort of job from the same chap, and in both cases achieved the basics.

But mark the smallprint. The footnotes. In each instance, while Team Forster were still high-fiving one another on a job well done by their man, a troubling spin-off was in immediate development. For in both cases, Forster had made the pretty short-sighted call to bat the dashed thing straight back into the heart of what might be called ‘Hostile Territory’.

The close-range header he patted in a neat parabola that had its terminus around the penalty spot, or would have done Porro not made the executive decision to smash the ball away first and take questions later. And while goalkeeping is one of those subjects about which, as soon as any given expert starts prattling on, the old mind downs tools and sets off on a wander, I nevertheless recall that one of the fundamentals of the art is to make sure that in making a save the ball ends up comfortably out of focus, preferably nearer the aisles.

(Having said that, the ill-informed AANP take on such things is to yearn for the days when the goalkeeper would simply catch a shot – seemingly a forgotten art now. But such robust situation management would no doubt have current coaches going weak at the knees in horror. The current vogue is to give the ball a friendly pat back into play, and AANP’s goalkeeping masterclass be damned.)

So as mentioned, the Jiminez header was bobbed gently up towards the penalty spot, which seemed a mightily risky approach to me. And in fact, given that Forster had had to transfer his frame horizontally off to the right in making the save in the first place, it also seemed to me that it would have been a dashed sight easier to have sent the ball off even further to the right, rather than scooping it back into the centre of the stage. Physics, and all that, what?

Anyway, the gods smiled on him and the danger was duly averted, but no such luck half an hour later when Jiminez had a pop from outside the area. Again, Forster went a-tumbling to his right, and manoeuvred a significant proportion of his frame between ball and goal; but again, the curious young cove somehow manged to bat the thing straight back into trouble, in the centre of the penalty area. The finish from Traore was surprisingly good, but that seems beside the point: Forster really should have ensured that the ball would head off into a completely different part of the mainland.

And watching the beastly sequence replayed from all angles, it all reminded me of a moment against Chelsea last weekend, when Sterling had a pop from the edge of the area, and again Forster produced a big thick tick in the box marked “Save The Thing First and Foremost”, but then spilled the ball into prime goal-poaching territory, and was bailed out by a closely-situated chum.

From memory the Chelsea episode involved the ball bobbling off his chest and various assorted limbs; but for both of yesterday’s he had rather more control of the thing, getting a solid hand to the header and a delivering a two-fisted punch to the second shot. As such, in each instance the blighter really ought to given more thought to the entire story arc.

So much for Forster. Those five-or-so minutes of highlights revealed precious little else. It was, I suppose, nice to see Harry Kane pass on the opportunity to thump another free-kick straight into the wall, instead allowing Pedro Porro to demonstrate a pretty handy additional string to his bow (Kane’s generosity in this matter, my spies inform me, extended only so far, and the following free-kick he duly claimed, and did his usual thump-and-wall job).

But as for the rest, it’s a mystery to me – and a one-nil defeat away to Wolves is, in truth, one of those into which I would rather not delve too deeply. As mentioned after the Sheff Utd loss, the stage now seems set for Dr Jekyll to emerge midweek vs Milan.

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Spurs match reports

Spurs 2-0 Chelsea: Three Tottenham Talking Points

1. The Skipp Goal

Flitting over the first half handbags and jollies, that Skipp goal positively burst at the seams with all the right sort of stuff.

For a start, it came straight from second half kick-off. I suppose you might say there is nothing so remarkable about that – the game does have to restart somehow after all. Nevertheless I’ve sometimes watched our lot peddle this same routine each game, and wondered if they might not rustle up something with a touch more grace and elan than simply giving it to Dier to clout up into the heavens and loading the left flank with runners in preparation for when gravity does its thing.

I would have expected that Chelsea would a) have been wise to this approach, it being the one we adopt just about without fail every time we start a half, and b) not had too much difficulty in countering it.

But there it was, considerably higher on altitude than subtlety, with Davies, Richarlison and Kane queueing to see what would be on offer once the thing fell to earth. Davies and Richarlison were the principals in this instance, the former plucking the ball from the sky whilst the latter did an impressive spot of swivel-and-onward-shovelling towards the centre. And when the Skipp household crack open their umpteenth bottle of champagne tonight and light up a cigar or two to round the thing off, they may want to offer a toast to the neat footwork and general alertness of Richarlison, in rotating affairs from a position of no more than general promise, on an inside left perch and with back to goal, to a position of considerable threat, with Kulusevski and inside the D.

There then followed a sequence of suitably dramatic events in the build-up to Skipp’s big moment, which included a few helping hands from our odious guests. For a start Kulusevski found Emerson, whose presence in the prime attacking spot should no longer surprise anyone. His shot was handled by the Chelsea ‘keeper with considerably greater theatre than necessary, meaning that rather than slamming the door on the whole episode it instead created a even glitzier sequel.

Another Chelsea fellow picked up the baton and handily threw in a rubbish clearance, which kept things alive. And at this point young Master Skipp cleared his throat and marched onto the stage for his big moment.

Amidst all the fuss over his finish – and it oozed with quality, make no mistake – the preamble might easily be ignored, but I was particularly taken by it. It involved the fine young fellow winning a ball for which he was, if not exactly a rank outsider, certainly second favourite. But a spot of upper body beef, did half the job, and it was topped off by a general desire and will to win that I wouldn’t normally associate with our lot. And yet there it was, and against the odds Skipp emerged from the conflab as master of all he surveyed.

All that remained at this point was for him to close the eyes, swing the peg and hope that the outcome was one of those half volleys bestowed once or twice a lifetime from on high. Not only did he catch the thing on its sweetest possible spot, the ball also slapped off the underside of the bar – an element that, as is universally acknowledged, augments the aesthetic value of any goal by around a thousand per cent.


One cannot but help beam with avuncular pride for young Skipp. Such an earnest soul, and a Tottenham boy from root to stem, but by virtue of his role in life rarely the sort to receive much acclaim. It was pleasing enough to see him score his first goal for the club, but to do so in quite such glorious fashion really does make the heart sing a bit.

2. Romero

It says much for all concerned in the lilywhite defensive ranks that Chelsea didn’t really get a decent view of goal the whole match. Sterling’s first half sprints had me chewing the lip once or twice, and there may have been a long shot or two, but really nothing to make the blood freeze over and spine quiver.

On one of the few occasions in which they did threaten, courtesy of a couple of neat diagonal passes through the lines that shifted things from ‘Minimum Threat’ to ‘Clean Through On Goal’, I for one was grateful for the intervention of one C. Romero Esquire. On that particular occasion, Romero displayed in the first place a decent sense of awareness of current affairs, in springing from his usual spot on the right of the centre-backs, to cover a breach on the left. On top of which, he then had the bright idea to pursue a policy of minimal contact in order to see out the danger.

Romero, as is public knowledge, is the sort of egg who cannot resist solving life’s problems by throwing a full-blooded limb or two at it. Recourse to such action in the penalty area, and indeed in the six-yard box, might have had some pretty dangerous consequences. In this instance, however, he opted to insert his frame in between the ball and the onrushing Chelsea forward, and the ploy worked to perfection. What had threatened to escalate into a clear-cut opportunity, instead fizzled out quietly, as Romero guided the ball to safety much like a responsible adult escorting some unruly child across a road.

It was one of a number of pretty impressive interventions from Romero throughout. In recent weeks – just about every week, in fact – I have cocked a pretty dubious eyebrow as he has flung himself, body and soul, into a challenge, seemingly not content unless some furniture is damaged and a card brandished at him. Today, by contrast, the feist and aggression were on show, but always in controlled and regulated fashion. He tackled firmly, cut out passes and crosses and the like, and also did a spot of overtime covering in random areas like left-back whenever the situation arose.

Those casual moments when he mistook our one-nil lead for an eight-nil lead and rather complacently allowed the ball to be nipped from him took the sheen off things, but I wave a forgiving hand in this instance. He carried out the nuts and bolts of defending pretty robustly, and I was all for it.

3. Forster

Another chap whose name is likely to receive only the briefest mention, but whose occasional inputs caught the AANP eye, was Fraser Forster. Not that he was exactly overburdened – the five colleagues directly in front of him, and indeed the five in front of those, all contributing pretty diligently, leaving Chelsea unable to muster more than a shot or two in anger.

 And in fact, one of the few shots that Forster did have to deal with, in the first half, he made rather a pig’s ear of. It was one that either needed a clutching to self or shoving pretty mightily off to the margins, but Forster did neither, the ball popping from his frame and requiring an intervening bloot from Ben Davies to extinguish.

But in the second half, the gigantic chap seemed to get the message, seemingly struck by the benefits of doing simple things well. Most notably this happened when one or other of the Chelsea mob wriggled their way into the area and looked for all the world like the next item on their agenda would be one or other of rounding the ‘keeper or toe-poking into the net. Either way, a spot of pretty serious peril loomed.

Now wandering off on a tangent, I suppose it is possibly a mite unfair to criticise a chap both in his absence and for a crime he didn’t even commit, but at this point the curious thought that flashed to my mind was that if Hugo Lloris had been in situ and minding affairs, I would have bet my mortgage on him somehow uprooting the Chelsea forward, at considerable cost to the overall masterplan.

However, we were blessed in this instance not with Lloris but with Forster, and he pretty admirably addressed this crisis by catapulting every inch of his eleventy-foot frame forward across the turf, so as to snatch the ball from the toe of the blighter, thus averting either toe-poke or rounding-of-‘keeper scenarios.

In common with Romero’s intervention described earlier, since the net result was an absence of any damage, and what one might describe as a dot ball in the scorers’ book, it would be easy to shrug off the whole affair and pretend it never happened. But AANP has made a habit of getting rather too carried away with the small print when watching Spurs, and through this intervention (plus the handful of crosses caught with minimal fuss and dressing), Forster, in my book, earned his evening bourbon.

And there we have it. To a man our lot scrapped and fought as required, threw in a couple of moments of quality in the final third, and tootled off with another pretty comfortable win. Long live that Stellini chap.

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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

Spurs 0-2 Arsenal: Five Tottenham Talking Points

1. Lloris

After yesterday’s mess, anyone in the market for a spot of finger-pointing would have no shortage of options, for “Sub-Par” seemed to have been the motto adopted by our lot throughout. Nevertheless, even Hugo Lloris’s own family members would probably have to accept that their man played a pretty critical role in the whole sorry affair.

It would be a stretch to say that we were on top of things, or even matching Woolwich, at the time of his main clanger. Although the scores were level, they were making good use of their extra man in midfield, passing from the back and through our press a little too niftily for my liking and having oodles of joy in that Saka-Sessegnon mismatch.

But nevertheless. The scores were still level, and our lot were showing a bit of willing going forward. On top of which the atmosphere in the place, while hardly confident, was at least still hopeful. When a first-minute pass into the path of Sessegnon on halfway is greeted by a roar the like of which is normally reserved for a goal, you know that the watching masses are suitably bucked. Anything, one felt, might yet happen.

Alas, what did happen was Monsieur Lloris treating us to the latest malcoordinated flail of his limbs. Maddeningly, he had signposted that he was in the mood for a clanger just moments earlier. A back-pass of the harmless variety had landed his way, and rather than just deal with the thing through means cultured or otherwise, he went down the bizarre route of assuming that he would be allowed to saunter unchallenged across his area for as long as he fancied.

Well, it didn’t take 10 years in the Premier League, 100+ international caps and two World Cup Finals to see that that the scheme was doomed. Barely had Lloris started dribbling the thing than an opponent was at his back, and routes to escape were fast disappearing. Lloris sought solace in the form of a countryman, but popping the ball at Lenglet’s right peg added a further layer of complication.

Not that Lenglet should have had too much difficulty in simply blasting the ball to safety, whichever foot was required, being an international footballer and whatnot. But, perhaps taking a cue from his captain, he botched the operation further by giving the ball straight to a Woolwich player in the six-yard box, of all things. In the panic that followed, Lloris at least had the dignity to save at point-blank range, but the awkward glances were already being exchanged.

And sure enough, calamity soon struck. Which is to say a fairly straightforward undertaking was required, and Lloris made a pig’s ear of it again.

One might leap to his defence by pointing to the various mitigating factors about the place. Sessegnon might have done better than simply stepping aside and waving Saka through; the cross when delivered caught a deflection of the small-but-critical variety; and it also came flying in at a rate of knots.

And if the blister charged with minding the net had been a ten year-old, or perhaps an elderly and overweight sort whose hand-eye coordination has always been a bit off, these might well have been acceptable excuses. But for a chappie whose life is dedicated to catching footballs, and who, as mentioned above, has more Premier League and international appearances than one can shake a stick at, such excuses do not wash. Catch the bally thing. Or at the very least buffet it off into a safe space.

Watching Lloris instead pat the ball upwards and backwards into his own net really did have the will to live seep from every pore of my being.

Thereafter, all the saves in the world would have done little to rectify things, because in a game in which we were second-best anyway, it was pretty crucial to avoid gifting them a goal, and similarly crucial to keep the atmosphere charged and hopeful.

Not that Lloris did make all the saves in the world thereafter. Romero was to a large degree at fault for the second goal – first in not bothering to close down the chappie, and then turning his back on the shot, forsooth – but from 25 yards or so one would expect a luminary of the goalkeeping trade to cover his bases and extend a sturdy paw sufficiently. Lloris was beaten too easily, and I imagine there are now few about the place who expect him still to be in situ come the start of season 23/24.

2. Sessegnon

For young Sessegnon already to have been chastised twice above in a sermon about the failings of another player entirely is rather telling.

His selection certainly gave the eyebrows of all in N17 a bit of a pre-match jolt, but one could at least attempt to explain it away, loosely on the grounds of the vivacity of youth – Perisic, after all, while a bit of a specialist with the ball at his feet and the masses howling for a cross, is not the sort of chap at whom one would point and say, “There’s the fellow on whom I wish to build a defence, particularly on account of his breakneck speed”. With Saka in opposition, I presumed that Conte saw in Sessegnon a young bean with enough to pace to thwart Woolwich’s right-sided threat.

A nice idea in theory, but pretty wildly off the mark in practice. How Perisic might have fared in that first half against Saka we’ll never know, but the berth was Sessegnon’s and it was pretty obvious from even casual observation that he was pretty powerless to stop Saka doing whatever he damn well pleased. With neither Lenglet nor Son particularly inclined to help out, we pretty much just resigned ourselves, at least in the first half, to that flank being wide open for business and as good as unmanned.

Sessegnon did show some early inclination to carry out the more attack-minded elements of his role, but even there, having made the necessary gallops into threatening territory, he was let down time and again by a string of crosses that seemed to give up on their mission as soon as they left his foot.

In the interests of fairness it should be noted that his dash infield, which brought about the first-half chance for Sonny, was impressively bobbish. It showed a spirit of enterprise and adventure we otherwise lacked, and was topped off with a surprisingly crafty little diagonal through-ball. What the devil he was doing there, in some sort of Number 10 slot, is anyone’s guess, but it was much-needed.

He also combined neatly with Kane for his one-on-one in the second half, but whatever merit he earns for making the run, he rather loses for failing to bury the chance.

Those two little jaunts aside, I saw precious little in his performance to impress, and even before half-time I was constructing the argument for his removal and replacement by Perisic.

3. Sarr

The other selection of considerable note was that of Pape Matar Sarr. One rather sympathised with the young bounder, for as long Conte sticks with his 3-4-3 then the central midfield pair will almost always find themselves outnumbered, which seemed a rotten hand to deal a fellow on his full debut.

I suppose if one were to cast a cursory eye over a narrative of the first half, and digest that the Woolwich mob cantered through the centre pretty much at will, one might conclude that the Sarr selection was a failure on a par with that of Sessegnon.

However, I am inclined to launch a fairly robust defence of young Sarr. Given that Woolwich employed a midfield three, often supplemented by a fourth in Zinchenko, Sarr admittedly spent a lot of time simply chasing shadows, but, as I have thought of Messrs Benancur and Hojbjerg at various other points in the season, the lad can hardly be blamed for being outnumbered.

When Sarr was able to intervene, he did so well enough. He took to his tasks with plenty of zest, shuttled the ball along to others sensibly and seemed pretty composed when dwindling options forced him to quicken his feet and dance away from trouble.

He is by no means the finished article, and his yellow card was evidence of the fact that this was a midfield battle we definitely lost. On top of which, for all his positives, he is another in the depressingly long list of hard-working but rather functional sorts, when our midfield absolutely screams out for some creativity. However, both in terms of being outnumbered in midfield, and populating said midfield with functional bods, the blame lies squarely with Our Glorious Leader.

All things considered, I thought Sarr bobbed about pretty well. Quite where he stands in the midfield hierarchy is a little unclear – I heard a whisper that Bissouma had a knock, and Bentancur will certainly waltz straight back in, but Sarr, it appears, is now a credible alternative to and possibly preferred option above young Master Skipp.

4. Kulusevski (and Son’s Ongoing Struggles)

If Sarr’s performance was one of our better ones by virtue of being acceptable enough, Kulusevki’s was possibly the best, by virtue of offering an occasional threat.

Not that you’d have known he was playing in the first half, during which time our heroes struggled to string three passes together. Naturally, beginning the second half with a two-goal deficit was the prompt for a slightly improved performance, and it seemed little coincidence that we were far more threatening once it occurred to those in lilywhite that they were allowed to pass to Kulusevski.

He did his usual thing – running literally around opponents, and yet doing so in surprisingly effective fashion; standing up crosses towards the back post; cutting in to curl efforts with his left foot. And on another day, one or two of those little adventures might have brought slightly richer harvest, but even though the conclusion of his little incursions repeatedly fell a little short, his presence and involvement at least sparked us into life.

By contrast, on the other flank, poor old Sonny once again laboured away like the less talented twin of the chappie from last year. As happens every week, he simply failed to run up a head of steam in any respect. Be it a dribble, shot or attempt to shield and hold up the ball, his bright ideas repeatedly came a cropper at source, and not for the first time we were as ten men and one passenger.

Injury and conditioning no doubt forbad an earlier appearance from Richarlison, but the AANP line from pretty early in the second half was to hook Sonny and plop the Brazilian in his place.

5. Conte’s Role In All Of This

For all of the above, however, my principal grumble is not so much the individual performances as the masterplan (a term with which I play pretty fast and loose) from Our Glorious Leader. Yesterday was a neat illustration of how we are getting on under the chap.

The formation, and in particular the use of a back-three, irks the dickens out of me. I suppose in theory one might argue that the more defenders one thrusts onto the pitch the less likely we are to concede. And perhaps amongst most right-thinking folk, this would work out swimmingly, one fellow covering the next fellow, and so on. If the back-three were watertight and achieved clean sheets every week, the case for it would be pretty compelling.

Amongst our lot, however, the back-three is anything but watertight. And not only is it a pretty flimsy structure, its very existence also weakens our midfield. Deploying three central defenders means deploying only two central midfielders; and as evidenced yesterday – and in almost every match this season – our central midfield pair are routinely overrun by opponents with a midfield three.

On top of which our midfield pair offer precious little creativity because their principal role is to destroy rather than to create. In fact, I often wonder if their principal role is simply to gulp down great mouthfuls of oxygen at every opportunity and recover after galloping around trying to do between them the work of three men.

Aside from the formation, The Conte Way irritates because it seems the general philosophy being peddled is to defend rather than attack or entertain. The strength of our squad is undoubtedly its attacking riches, yet Conte’s primary goal each week seems to be to focus on shutting out the other lot. All of which inclines one to fling up the hands and implore them just to attack for heaven’s sake, what?

The fellow seems to be steering our ship until something more to his liking comes along. One year in and his brand of football is neither fun to watch nor particularly impressive on paper (fifth we may be, but we’re pretty comfortably beaten by all of our ‘rivals’). As I saw it put last night, “Conte’s priority appears simply not to mess up”, and this isn’t much fun to drink in every week.

Categories
Spurs match reports

Spurs 0-2 Aston Villa: Four Tottenham Talking Points

1. Not The Worst Opening Hour

Family commitments being what they are, AANP spent yesterday afternoon watching Disney princesses until the eyes bubbled, and as attempts to shield the self from the final score for 24 hours inevitably came a cropper, I found myself in that curious situation of settling down today to watch in its entirety a game the outcome of which I already knew.

Admittedly I was already pretty used to challenging viewing, following the marathon of wicked stepmothers and whatnot, but I naturally braced myself. The gist of the communication received overnight had been that, while not necessarily our lowest ebb, this performance was making itself quite at home amongst the great heapfuls of decidedly low ebbs we’ve had to experience in recent times.

But oddly enough, as the game unfolded I though our lot did reasonably well, albeit without being particularly good.

I probably ought to take this opportunity to duck out of the way of any rotten fruit being hurled my way by whomever is reading, for I suspect this is not a popular opinion. The masses, one fears, will not approve. Nevertheless, having expected the usual business of settling in for minimal possession until two down, or forlornly shuttling the ball along the back-three from east to west, and then west to east, each of the principals dwelling on their opportunity as if trying to get through a chapter of War and Peace before playing a pass, I was taken aback to note a degree of urgency throughout.

While there was a definite blank in the column marked ‘Creativity’, there seemed to be a consensus amongst our lot that if we were going to explore dead-ends we might as well do it snappily. (As an aside, I attribute much of this to the absence of Eric Dier, a chappie who, when in possession, does not consider his day’s work worthwhile unless he has wasted about half an hour rolling the ball from one foot to the other while contemplating his next move.)

In the absence of Dier, and in a general spirit of hurriedness, our lot managed at least to roll the ball from A to B within two touches each time. This struck me as a few notches up from rock-bottom, so I welcomed it happily enough. Moreover, but for some pretty iffy refereeing calls in the opening ten minutes, we might have been through on goal a couple of times. Before half-time Perisic found himself clean through, leading to the Kane header that was cleared off the line, and we started the second half looking far likelier to score.

Obviously things fell apart pretty spectacularly thereafter, and in an odd reversal of recent history, on finding ourselves two down with 30 to go our lot gave the shoulders a collective slump and dialled their efforts right down – but here at AANP Towers we viewed the first hour or so, if not exactly with uncontained enthusiasm, then at least with a degree of optimism. The urgency of that first hour was a welcome sight.

2. Bissouma

The flip-side of this, apart from conceding two more goals that made eyes bleed and soul weaken, was that for all our urgency there was no attacking spark.

The absence of Bentancur from central midfield does not help matters in this regard, but I suggest that the problems run a little deeper. Talented soul though he is, Bentancur alone is not the solution to our lack of midfield spark.

We seem to lack a fellow of ingenuity and whizzy ideas, slap bang in the centre of the stage (or perhaps ten yards advanced of that spot). And this seems to come back to the formation, the use of three central defenders meaning that we are restricted to two in central midfield – and while Hojbjerg and Bentancur have been amongst our starrier sorts this campaign, neither really are the creative masterminds whose reputations have been built on creating and scoring goals through an array of shoulder-dips and defence-splitting passes.

There has been a fair amount of chatter in recent weeks about the similarities between England and Spurs – I found it instructive to note how the national team nailed its colours to the Back-Four mast, thereby adding a sprinkle of creativity to midfield, and as a result died fighting, as it were, rather than waving a white flag in meek surrender.

Back to our lot, and in the absence of Bentancur, young Master Bissouma had another crack at the big-time. Alas, as with most of his previous appearances, nothing quite seemed to work for the chap. Not being one of those creative mastermind types alluded to above, his raison d’être could reasonably be concluded to be more along the lines of a defensive sort – collecting scraps, making tackles and intercepting Villa moves at their genesis.

And while he occasionally did each of the above, he just as often seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Villa attacks bypassed him; he picked up a booking essentially for being out of position and tripping a fellow from behind; and in possession he again seemed oddly uneasy with the physics of a sphere, seeming a little too easily confused by its propensity to roll, and bounce, and whatnot.

His nadir came with the second Villa goal, when for the second consecutive game the notion of tracking his man into the penalty area appeared a long way down his To-Do list, leaving the bounder in question with more space in our box than was reasonable to afford. One would understand – not accept, but understand – if a born-and-bred centre-forward made such an error, but here is a chap whose job title essentially reads “Defensive Midfielder”. To neglect the first rule of defensive midfielding, twice in consecutive games makes ones eyes bulge a bit, what? And it’s not as if he has a whole sackful of attacking party tricks into which he can dip to atone, at the opposite end of the pitch.

The fellow needs to get himself up to speed, and pronto. Frankly, if he is not going to carry out his defensive duties as if his life depends on them, I’d sooner he were politely shoved from his spot and someone more creative used in his stead (admittedly a practical problem or two emerges here, given that we have no-one matching that description in our ranks, but you see my point).

As it happened, I thought that the young lad Sarr looked a bit more familiar with things in the defensive midfield vicinity during his ten-minute cameo than Bissouma did during his eighty minutes, but the pecking order seems well established.

3. Lloris

If a few stern words can be bellowed in the direction of Bissouma, decency forbids elaborating upon the suitable punishments for Lloris after his latest hare-brained input.

Cast your minds back to the World Cup and the Lloris on display looked every inch the seasoned professional, carrying out his duties correctly and with minimal fuss, neat-and-tidying his way to the Final. Of the various clangers magicked out of thin air in our colours every few weeks there was no sign. It would be a stretch to describe him as ‘The Best on Duty’, but a reliable sort of egg he most certainly was.

What the hell happens to him once he pops up for our lot is therefore anyone’s guess, but this rot he springs from nowhere is simply too much. Fully paid-up members of the Lloris Fan Club may warble about the ball moving, or the ball bouncing, or the ball turning a somersault en route, but that guff won’t wash at AANP Towers. The chap’s job is first and foremost to catch the dashed thing, and if he can’t master that particular basic then I’m at a bit of a loss to understand what purpose he serves.

These mistakes are far too frequent. Moreover, while one of the johnnies of yesteryear once came up with a decent gag, that to err is human, the gist being that just about every player will make the occasional mistake, the goalkeeper is well aware of his lot in life. There’s little in the way of safety nets or bail-outs in that position. Either get it right or be off, is pretty much the AANP message to the goalkeeping fraternity, and Monsieur Lloris has now created quite the catalogue of foul-ups for our lot.

4. Gil (and Perisic)

If absence makes the heart grow fonder it pretty much bursts through the ribcage and howls for Dejan Kulusevski at present. Still, no use complaining, what? The absence of D.K., plus a couple of the other preferred options, meant that young Senor Conte had to dip his hand into the box marked ‘Last Resort’, and pulled out a Bryan Gil.

I suppose the one-line summary is that we found out nothing that we did not know before. He was full of willing, itching throughout to unleash a trick or six and, containing practically zero in the way of muscle about his frame, was always liable to come out second-best in any man-on-man combat.

I thought the young nib made a decent stab of things. If points were awarded for body language he’d have needed a decent-sized bag to carry off his prizes, because he seemed to burst with enthusiasm for the task at hand. There were a few good link-ups with Matt Doherty (who I thought also fared well enough, certainly incurring less rage in his decision-making than the other fellow) and a few moments when he dipped a shoulder or two to create space for a cross. Alas, Gil continues to look like a boy in a man’s world. A delightful and earnest boy, the sort who would take great pleasure in doing his mother’s bidding – but a boy nevertheless. Still, I was glad to see him get a game, combine with Doherty and buy into the general mentality of urgency.

And on the other flank, I thought this was one of Perisic’s better days, at least when on the front-foot. The ‘Back’ part of the wing-back role is, as touched upon before, not one to which Perisic attaches too much concern, but going forward he is a pretty nifty so-and-so. His ability to choose from right or left clog when it comes to swinging in crosses is a bit of a blessing, even if his only targets tend to be Kane and Doherty, and as often as not he was our most advanced forward.

However, for all the silver linings and first half urgency and whatnot, this was another dreadful defeat. A couple of opportunities await to right these wrongs, before a few rather alarming fixtures come flying at us later in the month.