Tag: Premier League

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Spurs match reports

Spurs 1-0 Newcastle: Four Tottenham Observations

1. Sonny Saves The Day Again

As will be familiar to those who regularly stop by these parts, the AANP take on the midweek win against Newcastle brought peltings with rotten fruit in the Comments section, for the admittedly reckless decision to omit from the list of the venerated Son Heung-Min.

With that in mind, and given that the lively young bean scored the critical goal yesterday, it seems only right to shower him with all manner of praise.

In truth however, through no particular fault of his own, he was a little muted yesterday. The spirit was as willing as ever, as he buzzed hither and thither, and even when at a standstill his legs appeared slightly blurry with movement. Newcastle, however, had been up all night poring over their homework notes, with the result that they swarmed all over Son like he was a homing beacon, and for much of the game he was crowded out.

Mercifully, the chap is fleet of foot, and it is to his credit that he conjured from pretty much nothing a yard of space yesterday, and did not wait for a second invitation to leather the heck out of the ball.

Having flown around the world twice, and been out on his feet at the conclusion of the Newcastle match, Sonny’s contributions, particularly in the absence of Kane and Dele, have bordered on the super-human, injecting moments of inspiration when we have needed them most.

2. Vertonghen’s Exciting Day Out

Our Glorious Leader sticking to his principle that to play a wing-back in consecutive games would be madness of the highest order, and with Davies still absent injured and young Walker-Peters too dashed right-footed, there was a rare day out on the left flank for AANP’s close chum Jan Vertonghen.

As social experiments go it made for interesting viewing. Nature having decreed that any and all useful output should emanate from the chap’s left stem, he was at least appropriately balanced for left-backery. However, Vertonghen is a man of pretty lengthy proportions, sinewy and elegant, well-designed for tackle and stretch, and not necessarily the obvious pick for lung-busting runs along the flank, with chest thrust and muscles throbbing, a la Danny Rose.

It meant that the fellow did not necessarily look entirely at ease as he set about trying to make a fist of the role, life’s accelerations and bursts not coming entirely naturally to the chap.

Not that his team-mates gave the mildest hang about his travails, for the Player X-to-Vertonghen routine seemed a pretty well-rehearsed one, and pretty swiftly became the option of choice as Newcastle barricaded the various other routes to goal.

To his credit, Vertonghen beavered away as instructed, and while his crosses missed as regularly as they hit, he had a decent amount of joy, and gave our heroes a viable option throughout.

His eventual replacement by Rose nevertheless made sense as we switched to 3-5-2 in the closing stages, Rose being more genetically disposed to go hurtling down the flank. All told, the use of Vertonghen as left-back is probably not going to be nailed on for generations to come as the tactical ploy of choice, but for a random joust against a Newcastle mob set upon deep, deep defence it was at least moderately successful.

3. Llorente’s Impact, Again

Having lambasted Llorente whenever the opportunity has presented itself in recent weeks – and on several occasions when no such opportunity has existed, but the urge has simply become too strong – lovers of irony were in their element yesterday as I bemoaned the unfortunate egg’s absence throughout.

With our lot camped outside the Newcastle box, and the entire Newcastle lot camped within, the case for airborne crosses was pretty compelling, and the stage seemed set for Llorente to peddle his wares. Alas, the pairing of choice was Moura and Son, whose prowess on terra firma is unfortunately not matched by any particular renown in the air. A couple of decent headed chances popped the wrong side of the posts, and by and large we were kept at arms length by the massed ranks of Newcastle bodies.

Not to criticise Poch for this particular call, mind. Llorente has been used on a near-constant basis since Kane’s untimely departure, so there was some sense in rotating him out. And one might opine that the plan actually worked to perfection, given that the chap then set up Son’s goal when he was ultimately introduced.

4. Late Goals When Most Needed

So for the umpteenth time this season our heroes have come up with a late, late goal send us all home with a sentiment somewhere on the scale between relief and buoyancy. Much more of this and folk will start accusing us of having mettle and grit and not bottling our affairs.

More serene, comfortable victories would obviously be preferable, but I must confess to a little thrill at the manner in which we can now enter the final furlong still needing a goal but with an underlying sense that actually we might dashed well go and grab one from somewhere.

We almost certainly will not win a trophy this season, but it appears that another string is being added to the lilywhite bow, as we have now become one of those teams who can eke out goals in the dying embers.

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Spurs 2-1 Watford:

1. The Many Twists and Turns of the Llorente Soap Opera

If Fernando Llorente had been hoping for one of those quiet, drama-free nights that flits swiftly from the memory, he was in for quite the shock.

When the incorrigible old bean contrived to knee the ball over the bar from practically underneath it, the hills were alive with the sound of groans, curses and around thirty thousand palms simultaneously slapping foreheads.

For his own part Llorente did the honourable thing and duly adopted the pose of a man doing his level best to be swallowed up by the earth. More broadly, the omens were not particularly cheery, our heroes still being one goal in debit. The thought began to crystallise that if we were going to escape from this particular hole the odds appeared heavily stacked in favour of us doing so despite rather than because of the gangly fellow.

And yet, fast forward fifteen minutes or so and the chap was galloping off to the touchline in celebration, face contorted and fist clenched. He may have cut a pretty calamitous figure for much of his Tottenham career, but loft the ball towards his upper regions and Llorente will tend to find a way to plant a header into the net.

The curiosity in amongst all of this is that the ten lilywhites around him, while presumably having met him at some point, nevertheless seem utterly oblivious to the fact that Lorente is not, never has been and never will be Harry Kane, and just continue to play as if he is. They ignore his limitations – namely his stunning lack of mobility – and indeed his strengths – all that aerial muck – and instead whizz around the pitch as normal, and tell him to keep up if he can. Which he can’t.

The net sum of all this is that for much of the binge we play almost as if a man short. When a cross finally was lobbed onto his head, the blighter scored. Makes one think a bit, what?

2. Poch’s Changes

Going back to the beginning, it was another one of those dirge-like first half knocks, which suggests that some of the wiring is not quite right at HQ. Bar young Sonny, whose effervescence from the off was rather eye-catching, there was a distinct lack of movement and general urgency in that first half.

Not for the first time in recent weeks, Our Glorious Leader therefore took a sip or two from the chalice of half-time tinkerings, and with Lucas Moura introduced, and Sissoko drawing the short straw of right wing-back, things pretty immediately assumed a much rosier hue.

In truth, Sissoko hardly looks at ease in any position on the pitch, so right wing-back was as reasonable a shout as any other, and the chap did all that was necessary, including delivering the perfectly serviceable cross that resulted in Llorente’s one-yard moment of horror.

Further credit to Poch for recognising that there was more to be gained from introducing a more bona fide crosser onto the right, and accordingly shoving Trippier into action; and even his gambit of Lamela-for-Vertonghen was surprisingly – and pleasingly – proactive, for a man who has spent several years carefully cultivating his image as one firmly welded to the laissez-faire principle of letting matters take their own course during play without dreaming of injecting any tactical interference.

The changes ultimately worked, but if one were to quibble – and let’s face it, the interweb exists for precious little other reason – one might politely opine that we would have been better off by beginning in such manner rather than falling behind and adjusting like the dickens.

3. Moura

For all the nuanced alterations, it was Moura’s introduction that really turned the thing on its head and blew all our skirts up.

Where Son had previously ploughed an effervescent but pretty lonely furrow, Moura’s direct running noticeably achieved the double-whammy of shoving fresh handfuls of problems at a Watford defence used to the markedly less mobile threat of Llorente, whilst simultaneously giving our lot a wealth of fresh options, either in the penalty area or attacking from rather deeper districts.

He might not have scored or directly created a goal, but there were certainly hints of the early-season Moura who merrily ran riot at Old Trafford, and with Messrs Kane and Alli still some distance away from being fully paid-up members of the parish, his was a welcome return.

4. Rose, The Useful Alternative Attacking Option

The ever-feisty Danny Rose also caught the eye, as he often does. In the second half in particular he seemed rather to enjoy the self-assigned task of trying to dribble past as many yellow shirts as he could spot, at one point beating a man and then re-tracing his steps purely for the purpose of finding the same man and beating him again.

All of which would have served little purpose, but he did at least have the courtesy to sail in a few crosses at the end of it all, or at least attempt to do so. More often than not they brought corners, but in the final throes it brought Llorente’s goal, and as such he did precisely that for which he was put on God’s green earth.

Aside from such direct involvement, it was also notable how often we resort to the diagonal switch of play, from the right or centre to the feet of Rose stationed wide left, when the well of creative ideas runs dry and all in lilywhite simply mooch around with gormless faces and shrugging shoulders. Where Walker-Peters is forced to cut back onto his right, and Davies’ attacking talents are somewhat limited, Rose time and again offers a viable alternative against the deep-lying defensive units.

5. Late Comebacks: Becoming A Habit, Would You Believe?

Mercifully our persistence paid off, and not for the first time. Time and again our heroes are finding ways to drag themselves back into games and produce late wins when the outlook has been decidedly gloomy but five or ten minutes earlier. It will not win us a trophy any time soon, nor can we be considered credible title challengers, but one does get the impression that another box is being ticked this season.

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Fulham 1-2 Spurs: Five Tottenham Observations

1. Grinding It Out – Again

Credit where due. Traditionally our lot have never really gone in for the business of knuckling down and sweating out every last drop, preferring the fancy stuff when it suits, and capitulation when it doesn’t.

This season however we have dragged ourselves back in the dying embers of three Champions League games, won a stack of Premier League games without playing remotely well in the early months – and now a last minute winner when bereft of our three leading scorers, and having last our another leading attacking light during proceedings.

No doubt we’ll be accused of choking again the next time someone sneezes out of turn, but this was the latest in a string of impressive displays that suggests that some stern stuff resides deep within the cores of our troops.

2. The Tragic Llorente

I suspect I might be in a minority of one on this particular point, but I’ve always been rather fond of Llorente. Always cast a rather admiring eye at his ability to cushion an arriving ball into the path of a chum with the delicacy of one of Venus’ suitors giving it their tenderest work. Admittedly there’s not much else to his game, but his cushioned lay-offs were always top-notch.

Alas, I counted but one of those against Fulham – arriving in the 79th minute – and with his heading compass woefully awry there was not a dashed thing to commend about his lumberings.

As a Plan B in the final ten minutes of a cup game, shoved on alongside Kane, he has some merit; as the focal point from first toot to last, the poor blighter offers all the threat of a rabbit in headlights – rooted to spot, limbs incapable of shifting him from point A to point B, a look of utter dread etched across his features.

Bar the occasional headed flick, Llorente offered nothing. He did not drop deep to partake in any build-up play; he did not hare off into channels; he did not hold up the ball; and I don’t recall him at any point collecting the ball with his feet. Given that at the best of times he traipses around the pitch like a weary farm-beast just waiting to be put out of his misery, one imagines the own-goal did not help his confidence.

I suppose the charitable stance is to excuse him on the grounds that none of the above have ever exactly been listed on his CV as attributes, and one can hardly expect him to do that of which he is physically incapable. The pointed counter-argument is that he is a professional footballer – and a striker at that – and therefore dashed well should be able to offer a handful of those assets normally found in a target man.

3. The Other Ten: Politely Ignoring Llorente Throughout

In a charming sort of way, playing with Llorente reminded me of those schoolboy games in which some poor young scab is picked solely because the teacher recognises the name, having taught his older sibling. Everybody was too polite to admit openly that he was utter tripe, but they all knew it.

No particular blame attached to the other ten, who played gallons of football that was neat and tidy and patient – and some that was even effective – but from the off there was a sense of a team playing with ten men.

The sorry conclusion to it all was that out there on the pitch our heroes pattered along with things while ignoring Llorente as respectfully as was possible, and seemingly actively avoiding any opportunity to lob a cross towards him; while here at AANP Towers yours truly sat with head in hands, muttering a choice variety of curses as the game serenely passed the wretch by.

If this is a sign of things to come – we field Llorente, simply ignore him and continue to play our usual intricate way but in effect without a striker – I would prefer we put the Spaniard out to pasture, and field a youngling of the ilk of Kazaiah Sterling instead.

4. Dele Alli, All Our Hopes Rest On Y- Oh

There was something wonderfully predictable about Dele Alli’s headed goal, but it was no less delightful for it. The young bean seems to have perfected the art of ghosting in at the back post to nod the ball in, and all with an appearance of effortless ease that must have Senor Llorente casting all manner of envious glances in his direction.

In recent seasons I have been inclined to give young Dele quite the bashing. Too much frippery and not enough substance, has been the gist of the charges.

To his credit, the young fish has been poring over my words religiously, and this season has done his level best to win back my approval. For this I graciously applaud him. His marvellous technique is now applied to the greater good, if you get my drift, looking to unpick the opposition rather than drifting off on his own little meandering game of nutmegging as many passers-by as possible.

Given the hopeless efforts of Llorente alongside him, much seemed to depend on Dele, both today and in future weeks with sterner tests to come, so the sight of him shuffling to the bench and adopting the gloomy disposition of a man whose hamstring has just gone ‘ping’ was fairly crushing stuff for all concerned.

Where the dickens we go from here is anyone’s guess, but logic dictates that Llorente might get another bash at things. One suspects that back at Casa Pochettino, away from the gaze of the cameras, our glorious leader is lamenting this necessity, and wondering whether he ought to dig out his size nines and start in attack against Chelsea.

5. Winks’ Moment of Glory

Not the likeliest of heroes, but a fairly deserving one, I suspect you’d agree, for it was an honest, if fairly unspectacular day’s work.

Young Winks never wants for eagerness; and if that faint praise sounds a tad damning it was rather meant to be – having been a fully signed up member of the Winks Fan Club in seasons gone by, his doings in recent weeks have left me a tad underwhelmed, and I’ll explain precisely why.

As often as not, when he picks up the ball, his instinct has been to pivot back towards the safety of home, and pass the thing sideways or backwards. It is all something of a contrast to his earlier days in lilywhite, when he seemed to have a more adventurous streak to his DNA. The safety-first approach undoubtedly has its merits, and is often enforced upon him, as the deepest lying midfielder – but as indicated, has left me a couple of notches short of being truly whelmed.

Today seemed to be a welcome return to the more forward-thinking Winks of yesteryear. This was partly helped by the obliging hosts admittedly, who did little to pressurise him when in possession. Nevertheless, whether passing the thing or taking the initiative himself and setting off on a northbound gallop, he generally contributed his tuppence worth to the cause in proactive fashion.

And once Dier was slung on alongside him he pretty well took the hint that the shackles were off and he had licence to poke his nose further forward – and poke his nose he duly did, and with some aplomb.

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Spurs 0-1 Man Utd: Four Tottenham Observations

1. A Heartening Performance

Curses are naturally flowing pretty liberally around the white half of north London, but here at AANP Towers we’re actually sipping the early-evening double whisky with a generous dollop of equanimity.

The wound of defeat obviously cuts deep, and so on and so forth – but after the laboured 90 minutes against Chelsea, and a first half here in which there was a collective air of legs ploughing through quicksand, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the rip-roaring stab of things made by our heroes in the second half.

No doubt about it, every lilywhite out there this afternoon looked utterly drained – and have done for a few weeks now – and I’m pretty sure I saw several of them being scooped up off the turf and carried off at the denouement.
Yet despite that, we kept beavering, making enough presentable chances to win a couple of games and frankly appeared to have a few bursts more energy than our opponents who were supposedly freshly sunned and rested.

Moreover, I was secretly rather chuffed that we kept our heads and continued to probe in those closing stages, rather than blindly whacking the thing north and offering up prayers. Up against a deep United defence-and-midfield I had wondered in the first half how the devil we were supposed to break them down at all. As it happened we did so on around a dozen occasions in the second half alone.

2. Our Finishing. Too Close To The Keeper, Don’t You Think?

Bunting is being decked and champagne sprayed around the United keeper, and one understands the sentiment, for the chap wasn’t allowed to catch his breath before sticking out another limb and keeping the good ship Hotspur at bay.

And far be it for me to deny the fellow his fifteen minutes, but I can’t help thinking we made his job a heck of a lot easier by firing most of those shots within his wingspan.

I trust my public will forgive me if I don’t list and analyse each individual chance separately, as I’m not sure the abacus has been invented that can track that sort of thing, but certainly both Kane and Dele shot at him rather than the corners when clean through, and one or two of the other less straightforward opportunities might also have been more emphatically tucked away.

Just one of those things I suppose. On another day – and there have been several of them in the past month alone – we might have hit the corners and been four or five up. Such is the rummy nature of life.

3. Poch’s Tactical Switch

And while immersing ourselves in rather pointless crumbs of comfort, a begrudging nod in the vague direction of Our Glorious Leader. One of the few sticks with which the sunny chap is ever beaten is his perceived inability to roll up his sleeves midway through a game and do some first-rate tinkering.

Come half-time today however, and with the likeliest form of attack having thus far been The Hopeful Alderweireld Punt, Poch duly tinkered away like the best of them, and produced more of a 4-2-3-1, of sorts.

Now the prosecution might well make the point that his hand was rather forced by the injury to Sissoko pretty much bang on half-time, and a jolly compelling point it would be too. I’m nevertheless inclined to give Poch the benefit of the doubt however, for he might have stuck with the midfield diamond and watched on gloomily.

Instead, Sonny went left, Davies was kept firmly under lock and key within the back-four – where many a cynic might observe he is far better placed – Eriksen sat deeper, and the outlook pretty instantly became a heck of a lot sunnier.

4. Squad Depth (Lack Thereof)

As alluded to above, one can only really applaud the efforts of the chaps out on the pitch, who appeared pretty much to use up their final bubbles of oxygen and every last ounce of energy in hammering away at the United door.

The unhappy fact remains, however, that the slew of crunch fixtures shows neither sign of abating nor adopting any less crunch. On top of which, the cast members themselves are now, rather inevitably, beginning to drop like flies.

The hooking of Sonny for yet another international tournament seems rather heartless, as he’s only just got over the jet-lag from the previous one, but into every life some rain must fall I suppose.

The injuries are just a plain nuisance, and no less annoying for being so utterly predictable. Winks and Sissoko seem to have partnered each other for around a dozen games in a row, so the sight of muscles twanging away mid-game was greeted with as many philosophical shrugs as gloomy grimaces.

Kane also seemed to exit the stage in far worse health than he entered, having taken a royal clattering in the dying embers of the game, and with Dier still not fit, Wanyama now just a picture on a Missing Person’s poster, Moura apparently injured and Dembele eyeing up the exit door, the whole carefully constructed and delicately held-together structure does look set to come tumbling down at any point.

Oh that we were minded to shell out a few quid in the transfer market, what? The party line remains that no signings will be made if they cannot improve the starting eleven, which sounds suitably bland and professional; but the argument grows stronger by the day that simply recruiting a few extra bodies of precisely the same quality would be no bad thing, if it allows for one or two of our mob to catch their breath between games.

Frankly there seems to be more chance of the sun exploding, which means we can potentially look forward to Skipp and Winks behind a front two of Lamela and Llorente in weeks to come.

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Cardiff 0-3 Spurs: Five Tottenham Observations

1. Doing The Necessaries in Defence

After boiling our own heads in the final 15 against Wolves it was pretty imperative that reason returned to her throne pronto, so this was very much the morning-after tonic of choice, and well done all concerned.

That said, as anyone of sound mind and body who witnessed proceedings will attest, it was a dashed peculiar sequence of events. We managed to take the lead without trying; then sewed the game up barely a quarter of the way through – again, without really dedicating any tremendous effort to the cause – and were then able to serenely idle away the remaining hour without breaking sweat.

One received the distinct impression that had we wanted to push foot down on pedal and break into a chorus of coruscating one-touch fizz we could well have done, at will – but quite frankly nobody wanted to. 3-0 away was enough.

Credit therefore – and for want of anybody else claiming it – to the defence. Admittedly Cardiff’s opening kamikaze act, as effective as it was comical, sapped the life out of them, with the result that they spent the majority of the match very obviously waiting for it to end. But if the Wolves debacle had taught us anything it was that if minds wandered all hell could break loose, so our back-four needed to have their shoes polished throughout, just on the off-chance.

And while there was precious little for them to do, they did it with minimal fuss. The most creative zips and spurts that Cardiff could muster were high diagonal crosses to a lumbering giant at the back post, and a handful of long throw-ins. Not exactly brimming with subtlety, but certainly enough to discombobulate our defence, so I applaud Danny Rose for fixing his eye on the ball to head clear on a couple of occasions, and every man in lilywhite for repelling most crosses swung into our box.

2. The Many Sides to Kane’s Game

Kane’s goal was about as far away on the other side of the spectrum from that he scored against Wolves as was possible, but it’s still a notch in the relevant column, so well done him. He lashed a few other efforts in various directions without much reward, but of greater impact was his work when dropping deep.

With Son a designated striker alongside him he had pretty strong licence to stroll back into midfield at his leisure, and where sometimes he delights in mooching out wide and pinging a crossfield ball to the opposite wing, yesterday his move of choice was to receive the ball sideways on and flick it early into the path of an onrushing chum.

The approach was as effective as they come, not least in contributing pretty crucially to the build-up to a couple of goals. Despite appearances the chap really is one of the most complete forwards I’ve ever cast eyes upon.

3. Eriksen’s Nifty Flick

Another quirk of yesterday’s events was that amidst the frankly soporific keep-ball were a handful of moments of joyous quality, utterly out of keeping with the rest of it.

At one point in the second half Dele Alli collected a pass while galloping up the left flank, and collected it with a glorious first touch that seemed to the naked eye to slice his defender clean in half. A neat little triangle involving Eriksen and Kane shredded the Cardiff defence. Sissoko produced a booming crossfield pass from one flank to the other that seemed to open a whole universe of possibilities. And so on.

But chief amongst these little gems was the Eriksen drag-back that wrong-footed half the Cardiff defence, just before he shot for his goal. As befits Eriksen there was no ceremony, he simply threw in a game-changing piece of skill as casually as if shelling nuts. Should I ever sire a daughter, Eriksen would be more than welcome to her hand in marriage.

4. Game Management

Big ticks all round then, and with the added bonus that we were able to revert to Snooze Mode as early as the 26th minute, as the game thereafter descended into a fairly tedious and perfunctory exercise in killing time. For fans of eye-watering square passes between centre-backs it was terrific stuff; for the rest of us, less so.

But lest we forget, this was an absolute masterclass in that which we so spectacularly failed to do against Wolves, so for all the whinges emanating from this quarter about lack of entertainment and ambition, in the second half in particular, the alternative does not really bear contemplation.

Pre-game I’d have chewed off the nearest flailing limb for a comfortable 3-0 sashay away from home, so this ticks the boxes pretty meatily.

5. The Bizarre Media Narrative

Here at AANP Towers we were particularly piqued at the broad reaction to our capitulation against Wolves, which seemed to be along the lines of laughter in the aisles – reasonable enough in itself – but on the grounds that our supposed title challenge had lasted all of 3 days or so – which struck me as pretty wildly inaccurate on a number of counts.

For a start one defeat did not a crisis make, as I thought was neatly illustrated by yesterday’s canter at Cardiff. To have to play four games in ten days also struck me as a pretty mitigating factor for what might be reasonably termed “a blip”.

And perhaps most pertinently, I’m not sure anyone in any way connected with the club genuinely believes we’re going to win the title this season, which made the whole business of laughing at Spurs for blowing a title push akin to criticising Terminator 2 for lacking in the rom-com stakes.

Still, papers have columns inches to fill and if the whole point of the exercise were to poke and prod the nearest Spurs fan until they yowled in childish resentment then it can be considered a job well done. And now that that’s done I’d be quite content if we can continue the low-key accumulation of wins that had served us pretty well for most of December.

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Everton 2-6 Spurs: Six Tottenham Observations

1. Our Glorious Front Four

If you are anything like me you might have tucked into your pre-match reviver with a nervous frown on your lips, because “Everton (away)”, as the first of four bashes in ten days, while not exactly having us barricading the doors and praying for divine intervention, nevertheless seemed a fruity prospect. Local intelligence dictated that a stern test awaited.

But then what does local intelligence know? Even when Everton went ahead, our rapier-like attacking thrusts had already been dropping hints like the dickens that our front four were in the mood for running amok, and at a hefty lick too.

Options wait eagerly in the wings – Lamela looked his usual rather arrogant, niggly self when unveiled in the second half, and Lucas, lest we forget, was talk of the town in the early weeks of the season – but there is little point arguing with the notion that Kane, Alli, Eriksen and Son are about as irresistible an attacking quartet as one might find if languidly spinning a globe, closing one’s eyes and jabbing one’s finger at it to compare the options from some other part of the world. Best simply to let the notion wash over oneself and embrace it. Those four, when on song, are as close as one gets these days to unstoppable.

It was as much the case at 0-0 and 1-0 down as it was when 1-3 up and beyond.

It certainly helped that Everton opted to fight fire with all manner of flammable material, essentially opening up the double doors, laying down a red carpet and inviting our attacking quartet to make merry as they pleased, with great yawning expanses all over the midfield and precious little protection for a pair of centre-backs faced with both Son and Kane in attack.

2. A Cautionary Note on Winks

Before tucking into the main course, a cautionary word about young Winks, who by and large admittedly had a whale of a time in the centre, but who is beginning to display a worrying tendency to bite off a darned sight more than he can chew.

Every now and then he seems possessed by the urge when collecting the ball to put his head down and wriggle away from approaching swarms as if it’s all just one sunny jamboree in the local park. I’m all for encouraging the chap’s inner Modric, but there a few delicate steps to be taken by the young muskrat before he can consider himself anywhere near that sort of celebrated level, and he would do well to keep things a dashed sight simpler for now.

Taking leaf out of the book of young Skipp might not be the worst move at the current juncture, Skipp bounding on for a brief cameo in which he did not put a foot wrong either in possession or out.

3. Sonny’s Goals

But back to the fun stuff. Specifically Son’s first goal, which boasted two constituent parts of considerable swash and buckle.

In the first place, the first time pass from Kane was the swivel-and-ping of a man having an absolute blast, and not really caring who knows it. As against Arsenal in midweek, he demonstrated how there is so much more to his game than simply planting ball into net, with both awareness and execution at the top of the dial.

Everton at this point continued their theme of seasonal generosity, with Zouma and Pickford making balloon animals and firing each other out of cannons before bumping into each other, tumbling into a clown-like heap and daring Sonny to shoot into an open goal from a fast-diminishing angle.

But by heck how well he finished. Sprinting in the wrong direction and with daylight seeping away by the millisecond, it was a brilliant effort.

4. Dele’s Goal

On another occasion I would have rattled away about the technique deployed by Dele to keep low his shot when the ball was bobbing and bouncing at him like an over-animated yo-yo, but when there are five other goals to choose from, Dele’s finish merits little more than a shrug and a polite ripple of applause, before we all excitedly chatter about the Eriksen volley or passing move for Kane or whatnot.

Mind you, the build-up to Dele’s goal had a hefty swig of punch to it. Sissoko’s one-two was fairly pleasing on the eye, and like a broken clock surprising us twice a day the big man also managed to nail a perfectly weighted pass, into the path of Son. The rest is history, but that build-up neatly encapsulated much that was sublime about our forward play today – swift, incisive passing, aided by intelligent, buzzy movement.

5. Eriksen’s Goal

Oh to have in any walk of life the ability that Eriksen has when striking a football. I suppose such things are a little easier to attempt at 3-1 up – the shoulders are less hunched, the spirit runs a little freer, the whole soul sways this way and that with a casual air as if to say “Well it doesn’t really matter either way, does it, whether I make a pig’s ear of this or the sweetest connection imaginable?”

And of course, this being Eriksen, he went down the route of a connection so sweet I pledged my undying love to it, there and then. Watch the replay closely and you’ll notice the ball itself is smiling as it flies in.

6. Kane’s Second

If you’ll excuse the disservice done to Trippier’s free-kick-taking abilities, I will coast blithely past Kane’s first, and instead cut straight to the business of ogling and salivating and stamping my feet at the second.

The numbers bods counted precisely umpteen passes in the build-up to this one, which I’m pretty sure automatically qualifies it for some sort of award for Services to Aesthetics. In fact, at the outset of the move, when our back-four and Lloris were carefully slipping the ball this way and that around our own area, my old man AANP Senior, whose lifetime of Spurs-supporting has understandably imbued him with a certain cynicism when watching, grumpily opined that he was not the most ardent supporter of the policy of playing out time in such joyless fashion.

Hush, aged one, I might have replied – but didn’t – because within approximately a dozen more glorious first-time passes in neat triangles around the hapless Everton mob, we were breaking away down the left like a bunch of escaped convicts breathing in glorious freedom.

Davies, in a rare moment of not-incurring-the-wrath-of-AANP, fed Son first-time, who whizzed it across to Kane first-time, who did what Kane does; and the whole thing had me purring away like a cat who stumbles upon a whole vat of the semi-skimmed good stuff.

So of the 4 games in 10 days, the least winnable one has been won. Traditionally I would sullenly mutter that we will probably undo all that good work in the next game or two, but this Spurs team repeatedly and pointedly demonstrates the stern stuff of which it is made, so shoots of festive optimism pop forth. Have a merry and blessed Christmas.

Like what you read? AANP’s own book, Spurs’ Cult Heroes is available on Amazon…

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Leicester 0-2 Spurs: Four Tottenham Observations

I’m not sure how public opinion will come down once the votes are in, but by my estimation this ranked amongst the best results of our season.

Before you gather your rotten tomatoes and start flexing your throwing arm, consider the evidence. Leicester, though not world-beaters, are no slouches, and had been in pretty rare fettle prior to last night’s events. On top of which, this rather cruel habit of the Fixture Gods, of scheduling a game every five minutes or so, continues unabated. Barcelona await on Tuesday, and to that end, most crucially, we entered battle with our two key weapons safely ensconced in training gear on the bench.

Throw in the usual raft of injuries – Dembele, Sanchez, Trippier, Lamela, Wanyama – and by the time the preliminaries were done I was fully expecting our heroes to drop a couple of points at the minimum.

1. Life Without Kane and Eriksen

After his disastrous Foyth-For-Toby gambit around this time last week, I don’t mind telling you that AANP was in unforgiving mood when the teamsheet went up in lights, revealing both Kane and Eriksen to be surplus to requirements. The eyebrow shimmered upwards with displeasure, make no mistake.

Now admittedly, ever since the World Cup, yours truly has been near the front of the queue of those yowling that Harry Kane needs to be given the occasional night off with his feet up and a mug of something warming in his hands. Pretty rich, you might therefore say, of me to yowl with equal displeasure when that very same wish is granted. And you would in fact have a fairly watertight point.

But the nub of the thing is that to drop one key player at a time might seem like common sense, but to drop two in one go, dash it, is really taking one heck of a chance.

Or so the argument ran pre-match.

As things transpired, Our Glorious Leader played his hand to perfection, keeping our star men about as fresh as a particularly buoyant couple of daisies ahead of the date with Barcelona, whilst maintaining league form that, if not quite relentless, feels like it’s about seven eighths of the way there. A mumbled apology duly falls from the AANP lips and wings its way Pochwards.

That said, for around 45 of 46 first half minutes we did scuttle around with a distinct absence of cut and thrust.
Kane’s absence, while hardly something for which one can compensate with an insouciant shrug of the shoulders and a carefree whistle on the lips, is nevertheless one of those trials in life with which one learns to cope. Not even Sonny’s own parents would suggest that he has the bulk and build to hold up the ball like Kane, and indeed the chap seemed to present all the physical presence upfront of a particularly wet piece of card, but with his pace and trickery he is at least capable of posing a threat as a striker. Lucas similarly has enough about him to make an opposing defender scratch his head and curl a lip or two.

Eriksen’s absence, however, is an altogether thornier subject to broach over post-prandial coffee. Nobody else in the team can pick and execute his brand of scything chances, and while we can tinker with formation and personnel until blue in the face, we look a darned sight more ordinary without him. That we ultimately won at such a cigar-puffing canter is a credit to Sonny for his quite marvellous opener, and Dele for a fabulous all-round performance.

2. Dele

Dele has never quite blown my skirt up as one would expect of a 50-goal midfielder, but by the time the curtain came down on proceedings yesterday I was one of the first out of my seat strewing the stage with flowers and yelling for an encore.

Eriksen he might not be when it comes to unpicking a lock with minimal fuss and a hefty dollop of suaveness, but the young imp still has a heck of a lot of technique and good-old fashioned schoolboy skill in his size eights. Last night he took the opportunity to rattle through a back-catalogue of his Greatest Hits, doing a passable impression of a young Gascoigne in the process.

What really made the world a sunnier place was that his dribbling and flicks were integrated within a pretty sound all-round display of decision-making. Whereas previously he has simply hogged the ball for the heck of it, ignoring the imploring pleas of better-placed colleagues, last night he seemed surprisingly alert to the fact that passing the thing was a real and credible option, and he hit a healthy balance between solo dribbles and well-judged distribution.

One still gets the impression that he would rather gnaw off his own arm than dish out a pass, but he mixed it up to good effect. In the absence of Kane and Eriksen, he seemed quite happy to take the lead, and his goal – though marginally the wrong side of the law, if we quibble about these things – was as richly deserved by the individual as by the team.

3. Full-Backs: No Longer A Forte

I saw this point made in one of last week’s evening papers, so if you already caught it yourself you might want to potter off and pour yourself a cheeky whiskey at this juncture, and rejoin the action in a couple of paragraphs’ time.

It’s the old gag about the current vintage of full-backs vs the circa 2015/16 vintage. Back then, Walker and Rose struck the fear of God into just about any opposing wide-men and managers you cared to name. They genuinely were amongst the best in Europe, and in a team full of assets and prized individuals had made a pretty solid stab at being the pick of the bunch.

But, as the cliché so neatly puts it, what a difference a couple of seasons, a huge transfer fee and personal ambition in a right-back, and a bout of depression, homesickness and injuries in a left-back makes. Walker is off dancing with the stars, Rose is a puzzlingly neutered version of his old self, and whichever personnel we use these days one’s instinct as an onlooker is to hold the breath and fear the worst.

Trippier, for all his whipped crosses onto the ample Kane forehead, sits rather awkwardly within a back-four as opposed to outside a back-three, as if itching for someone else to do the defensive stuff so that he can motor on into attack.

Aurier, while having generally cut the wild and reckless horizontal lunges from his game, is still neither one thing nor another, being both average at defending his patch and middling at attacking another’s.

As for Davies, the blighter would have my hair going a rich and glistening shade of grey if he had not already caused me to yank out great clumps of it in sheer frustration. His defending, as with the aforementioned, is generally no more than adequate – and quite often a few shades short of even that.

And as for his attacking, I can barely remember the last time one of his crosses hit the sweet spot in the heart of an opponent’s area. The Data Analysts amongst you will I’m sure report that the majority of his crosses bounce harmlessly off the nearest opponent. Even his less adventurous distribution seems oddly ill-executed, with misplaced passes and frequent instances of his being dispossessed seeming to litter the highlights reel.

To his credit, his infield pass ultimately set up our second goal yesterday, but this struck me very much as one to be filed under ‘Exception’ rather than ‘Rule’. The young sore’s calling in life may well be within the safety-netted no-man’s-land that is the left side of a back three.

In general however, whomever one picks from the models on offer, our full-back selection is no longer a thing of menace and threat.

4. Doing Remarkably Well – Despite Evidence To The Contrary

Getting back to the specifics, Leicester were oddly obliging about things once Sonny had struck oil right on the half-time gong, and the second half was about as serene as I’ve witnessed Spurs in seeing out one of these away wins.

Lloris did eventually have to make a couple of saves, but nothing of the ilk to have one clutching feverishly at the nearest friend for support. Toby and Jan were unruffled at the back, which bodes well for Tuesday and makes one yet again rue the team selection vs Arsenal, and while young Winks does often opt to for the safety-first option of a backwards pass when something a little more adventurous would not go amiss, his was a very secure performance, laced with an occasional forwards surge.

One cannot really go into the Barcelona game with any sentiment further north of hope, but even should the worst happen and we fall into the doom-laden pit of despair that is the Europa League, we still find ourselves in remarkably fine health. This despite playing 10 of 16 games away from home; despite ‘home’ itself now emitting a decidedly unwelcome whiff; despite muscle injuries for 9 of our 12 World Cup Semi-Finalists; and despite the fact that aside from one (vs Chelsea) and a half (vs Man Utd) games we have yet to play genuinely well, in the truest sense of the word, all season.

Start actually playing consistently well and good knows where we might end up.

Need a Christmas present for the Spurs fan in your life? AANP’s own book, Spurs’ Cult Heroes is available on Amazon…

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Spurs match reports

Arsenal 4-2 Spurs: Three Tottenham Observations

1. Outfought

Every now and then there comes a time in one’s affairs when one realises that things have not quite gone precisely to plan, and have in fact fouled up to pretty rotten levels. And at such times one really has little option but to smarten one’s tie, take a deep breath and face the world with a stiff upper lip and some of the honest spirit that was presumably hoovered up with gusto by those bygone era Christians who were spending their days being thrown to lions and other such unwelcome appointments.

This seems to be one of those times. Frankly our lot were outfought pretty much throughout, and there is no doubt the better team won. Unpalatable stuff to drink in, of course, but best digested swiftly.

Right from the curtain-raise Arsenal seemed to want the thing more, and the outlook didn’t really change much from that point. It had the air of those occasional away-days at West Ham, or the visit to Chelsea a few years back when they wanted to stop us winning the title – in short, the opposition’s cut and thrust had the air of stuff on which their last breaths depended.

As we did to Chelsea last week, so, with a neat symmetry did we have done to us this. Anybody in lilywhite who had possession was not given half a moment to reflect and glory in the fact, because packs of Arsenal blighters were swarming all over them, kicking and shoving and generally being a nuisance. Somehow our heroes failed to adjust to this way of thinking, and the whole operation pretty much fell apart at the seams as a result.

After around 20 minutes we did produce a spell of some neat and incisive little darts, and snaffled two goals out of it, which was a roaring return. When allowed to play, we trotted out decent stuff – but there’s the rub. By and large we just weren’t allowed to play, and for all the pushing and shoving we lacked a collective approach to the thing which took the fight to Arsenal and allowed us to get on top of them.

2. Individual Errors

Being a little too meek in the tackle and sluggish to the loose ball is bad enough in such hell-for-leather contests as this, such an approach being pretty much the polar opposite of that ordered by the doctor at these times.

But the whole dashed thing is sent plummeting to new depths when some of the key personnel involved start flinging around like confetti a whole slew of baffling acts of incompetence. Yet there in black and white they were, from minute one onwards. Worse, the specials from this particular list were trotted out by various esteemed members of the defence, behind whom of course there really is little else in the way of a safety net.

Aurier, Davies and Foyth were the principal early offenders, dwelling and dithering on the ball while numerous red shirts homed in on them, setting a dismal tone which their comrades adopted with a little too much gusto. In such circumstance one might have hypothesised that shifting play a good 60 yards up the pitch might have helped relieve the pressure, but the priority appeared to be kamikaze, so whenever he could Monsieur Lloris tried playing the ball out from the back. Naturally, every effort to pass the ball out from goalkeeper to back-four ended in near-calamity.

This sort of over-elaborate nonsense ought really to be swiftly consigned to the scrapheap, but of itself it doesn’t necessarily signal catastrophe. When the ball is lost out wide or in midfield, reinforcements can be summoned and last-ditch tackles made. The matter can be escalated. Disaster need not necessarily be declared. What really leaves matters in an irretrievable state is the most peculiar brand of idiocy that leaves an opponent clean in on goal, as peddled by some of those elder statesmen who really ought to know better.

Vertonghen’s handball as an early example. At a time when we desperately needed to keep our heads down, weather the storm and wait for Arsenal’s early energy to peter out, just about top of the list of Things To Be Avoided At All Costs was to randomly stick out a paw and concede one of history’s least necessary penalties.

Perhaps lower on the scale of Utter Insanity, yet hardly a moment to be paraded as a triumph for wisdom, was Eric Dier’s sliding attempted tackle on Torreira for the fourth goal, which was mistimed by around an hour, and was inexplicably executed behind rather than in front of him.

Moreover, 90 minutes featuring Juan Foyth would not be 90 minutes featuring Juan Foyth without some sort of error both utterly avoidable and seismic in effect, and the young boil duly obliged in the second half, with one of his copywritten moments of daydreaming while in possession, allowing Arsenal to scamper away and score their third.

3. Foyth Instead of Toby

On that note I’m inclined to pass a hand over a pretty fevered brow and wonder what the dickens Our Glorious Leader was thinking in picking Foyth ahead of Toby in the first place.

One understands and indeed applauds the sentiment of easing young Foyth into the rather unforgiving world of top-level centre-backery, but one would equally be fully justified in waggling a finger and protesting that there is a time and indeed a place for that sort of thing. Particularly when the whelp in question has a penchant for rustling up mistakes from thin air, like some sort of magician completely missing the point of his gig.

Would not a saner approach be to let Foyth bed in on home turf, and against opponents a little less likely to challenge for the top of the tree? We have about half a dozen such appointments in the coming month alone. And then, once proven in such circumstances to deliver without fouling up, fling him into an away day at The Emirates?

Evidently not. He made it through 90 minutes against Chelsea, but most certainly got away with his standard error (the unpunished foul on Hazard). On this occasion though, which ought really have to been one for as solid a foundation as we had, Foyth brought his box of mistakes and sprinkled them liberally throughout.

It would be galling enough, but the sight of Toby, fit and well, looking on from the bench is enough to make a grown man sink his head in his hands and wonder aloud where the devil it will all end. (One never knows, of course. Toby might have done a worse job of things, or simply not have been fit enough. The AANP eye, however, is jolly sceptical.)

One defeat does not a disaster make, of course, but with a game every 3 or 4 days until the new year it will be pretty important to bob back into shape at the earliest opportunity.

Need a Christmas present for the Spurs fan in your life? AANP’s own book, Spurs’ Cult Heroes is available on Amazon…

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Spurs 3-1 Chelsea: Five Tottenham Observations

1. Pochettino’s Tactical Triumph

Here at AANP Towers we have always looked kindly upon Our Glorious Leader, but more for his cherubic features, endearing humility and general good way with the youth of today. ‘Tactical Nous’ has always ranked a fair few rungs down the ladder, so to speak, when it comes to dishing out the gold stars.

Well not any more. I won’t pretend to be an expert in the dark arts of tactics, but by anyone’s rope Pochettino delivered a masterclass last night.

The whole delicately-planned jamboree reminded me of that scene in 80s rom-com Predator, in which Arnold Schwarzenegger and his sunny chums rig a whole array of nets and trip-wires and booby traps for the eponymous predator, the only difference being that whereas in the film the predator promptly escaped and killed them all, yesterday Pochettino’s traps left the Chelsea mob trussed up and at our mercy.

Right from kick-off, Poch’s tactics had Chelsea feathers ruffled, with glances exchanged amongst their number as if to say “What’s going on here then chaps?”

In a glorious throwback to around two seasons ago, Poch hit upon the nifty idea of pressing the life out of every Chelsea player who looked remotely dangerous. No sooner had one of them received possession and begun clearing their throat to voice their grand plans than lilywhite shirts were swarming around them and snapping at every available ankle.

2. Dele on Jorginho

Principal amongst ankle-snappees was Jorginho. I hadn’t been keeping up with current events myself, so was not aware that this chap was actually the second coming of something pretty special, but apparently he starts attacks, stops attacks, cures cancer and unmuddles Brexit, so he was evidently what is known in circles as A Big Deal.

Muzzling this blight upon society was therefore top of the agenda, and Our Glorious Leader hit on the unlikely plan of using Dele as a loose approximation of a man-marker.

On paper this might reasonably have been described as lunacy of the highest order, but as it happened, on grass the reinvigorated 2018/19 version of Dele was absolutely the perfect man for the job, loitering closer than the man’s own shadow.

Pochettino’s tactical masterclass wasn’t just limited to the deployment of Dele as one of history’s less likely man-markers. The use of Son as pretty much an out-and-out striker, always available as a blurry, whizzing outlet in the top right quadrant of the pitch, was another on his list of masterstrokes. The midfield diamond in general, and use of Sissoko in particular, pretty much kept Hazard kept securely under lock and key. Even Aurier, whose name I pretty sure translates into English as “Liability” kept Alonso on the back foot, and was pretty much faultless in defence throughout.

The whole set-up was a triumph, nabbing our rotten opponents hook, line and sinker. It was 2-0 after 15 minutes or so, 3-1 at full-time, but could, peculiarly, have legitimately been 6, 7 or more.

3. Glorious Goals

As our goals flew in yesterday, the thought occurred that despite being as different as these things can be, each was a thing of beauty in its own way.

Eriksen scattered the game with flashes of his impish best, and never more so than in the absolutely vicious delivery that set up our opener. It would have been an affront to decency for Dele to do anything else but glance home a cross like that.

Much comedy ensued for the second, with Chelsea defenders waggling their limbs and leaping out of the way of the ball, but a long-range shot has a unique and glorious quality, and although every man, woman and child who saw it took a brief moment to register that it had gone in, aesthetically it was a smashing effort.

(As an aside, I do rather wonder at the wisdom of the Chelsea bods for that one. Kane is hardly a new face on the scene, and has basically spent the last four years picking up the ball from distance and immediately belting it towards goal. Did none of them anticipate that this was going to happen? Really? The mind absolutely boggles.)

As for Son’s goal, it was the stuff of Hollywood scribes. My Spurs-supporting chum Ian casually opined that “He did not have to do much,” a sentiment with which I immediately took exception and delivered a lengthy rant, strong on emotion and light on fact, as seems to be required in this internet-based age.

The pedants amongst us will have noticed that Son actually collected the ball in his own half – therefore having a heck of a lot to do, Ian – before scuttling exactly half the length of the pitch, producing a slick two-step dance move that befuddled Jorginho (who by this stage was looking anything but the saviour of humanity) and then outsprinting the chap despite having to do so with the ball at his feet.

He then sprinted exactly half the width of the pitch, from touchline to near enough penalty spot. Admittedly he was not required to do much to beat David Luiz, who was busily haring away towards the corner flag, but as a grand finale Sonny then had to pick the right finish. And this, as he had proved repeatedly in the first half, was not something that had been coming particularly easily to him during the preceding hour.

4. Many, Many Misses

I don’t mind admitting that the inner Spurs fan who resides deep within my soul – sullying every fun moment with the ominous warning that this is Spurs, and it might therefore all come crashing down within five minutes of expertly-executed kamikaze – was at it again yesterday. At 2-0 I was adamant that the next goal was crucial, and that if we conceded we might as well wave a white flag at 2018/19 and tear down the new stadium while we were at it.

Mercifully, the next goal was handed on a plate to Sonny, who did not have to do much, but for all the joyous yelping and back-slapping, we were still outrageously guilty of missing an entire sackful of dashed presentable chances.

It may seem jolly ripe to complain about profligacy having put 3 past a previously unbeaten team, but you all saw the thing play out, and can therefore corroborate – we had enough straightforward chances to have scored six by half-time, and nine by full-time. Son missed three straightforward first half chances, and one of Toby or Foyth (I think) ought to have scored from a corner; while in the second half Kane and Dele forgot to factor in gravity when applying their finishing touches.

Still, might as well miss them on a day when we don’t need them, what?

5. Sissoko

As ever on these glorious nights, I feel I ought to prefix any personal praise with apologies for a whole raft of others who will go unmentioned despite doing sterling work – but yet again Moussa Sissoko delivered a performance that was as brilliantly effective as it was utterly baffling.

In a team full of technical geniuses and silky attackers, Sissoko’s uncontrollable limbs and unstoppable power ought not to fit, yet increasingly seems he like the crucial cog in the machinery.

As he has been doing for weeks now, he ran rampant in the defensive midfield area, blitzing everything in his path when not in possession, and somehow gliding away from challenges when he was, like a weird, malfunctioning Dembele.
Should the day arrive when he gets things wrong it will be absolutely ghastly to behold, but for now he gets most things right, and we have somehow stumbled – and never was there a more appropriate term – upon something utterly marvellous.

Need a Christmas present for the Spurs fan in your life? AANP’s own book, Spurs’ Cult Heroes is available on Amazon…

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Palace 0-1 Spurs: Five Tottenham Observations

1. Foyth

When Juan Foyth’s name and number was fanfared pre-kickoff, we lilywhite hordes did the civil thing and wished the young bean well, with images of his rather painful flurry of mishaps from last week’s debut trot still pretty fresh in the memory.

The early signs in this week’s concerto, it seems fair to say, were not the rosiest. A clumsy foul here, a strong contender for the 2018 instalment of Most Idiotic Concession of a Corner there, and within fifteen minutes one was already casting anxious glances in the direction of Our Glorious Leader as to whether the decent thing might simply be to hook the young fish and let him pass out the rest of his lilywhite days in the U23s.

Such a rush to judgement proved wildly misguided. Thereafter, young Foyth handled himself with several hefty slabs of aplomb.

Now one might argue that the Palace attack, baring as it did all the threat of a kitten entangled in a ball of wool, did not pose the fiercest threat, particularly when shorn of young Master Zaha.

However, spirited defenders of the boy Foyth might very reasonably counter by pointing to the weather, the nerves, the rollicking home crowd and the fact that everyone in Palace colours had read the memo recommending that whenever young Foyth went within sniffing distance of the ball he was to be homed in upon by anyone in the vicinity not otherwise engaged. The nub of the thing is that this was no cakewalk for the chap.

To his credit as a ball-playing footballer, and as a man of mental fortitude and fire-filled belly, he metamorphosed during the following hour or so into one heck of a dependable egg. His composure in possession did give the occasional palpitation but was broadly laudable, while his actual day-job of defending became increasingly impressive, in a right-place-right-time sort of way.

With Messrs Sanchez, Vertonghen and Dier at differing stages of fitness, Foyth’s performance does makes the world seem a cheerier place.

On top of which, his goal was poached with impressive swiftness of thought and movement, and was greeted with pretty unrestrained joy by his colleagues, which suggests that he’s a popular chap amongst the gang.

2. Sissoko

It speaks volumes about the instantly forgettable first half that its highlight was a marauding stroll past four opponents, finishing with a blocked shot, by one Moussa Sissoko, but that was where we found ourselves.

Let not that detract however, from the latest oddly impressive showing from our limited but effective cult hero.

Seemingly now fully aware that his role in proceedings is simply to follow two or three basic instructions, Sissoko patiently fed early balls to Trippier/Aurier in no-frills fashion; obediently tracked back to assist the aforementioned in defence as required; and occasionally trotted out his mesmerising dispossess-and-gallop routine.

Simple it might have been, but it also became pretty dashed effective, and as all around him laboured to unpick the Palace defence Sissoko suddenly started to emerge as a star shining particularly brightly amongst the lilywhite ranks.

By the time the second half was in full swing, the honest fellow was beginning to display hitherto unknown flashes of quality. A delightful first-time cushioned lay-off, some wrong-footing of oncoming foes whilst on the charge – it was bewildering, but mightily impressive stuff.

I still wouldn’t trust the blighter to knock a square pass five yards to a team-mate unchallenged if I were told to pick any professional footballer ever and have my life depend on it, for he retains within his genetic constitution something of the clumsy and calamitous; but in recent weeks the applause for Sissoko at AANP Towers has segued from ironic to sincere.

3. Lloris

The occasional panicked flap there may have been, but this will go down as one of Monsieur Lloris’ performances from the column marked “Game-Saving Stuff”.

Some saves were relatively routine, and some were of the faster-than-the-naked-eye-can-clearly-detect ilk, but after an unflustered opening hour or so our resident gate-keeper was called upon on several occasions, and can reflect with some serenity today as he collects the weekly envelope that this was a salary well-earned.

Doubts still nibble away, around his catching, kicking and sprinting hopelessly from his line, but the case for his abilities as a shot-stopper is pretty cut and dry.

4. Lack of Forward Thinking in Midfield

If sitting through the opening hour made your heart swell and pulse race then you’re made of sturdier stuff than I.
Palace, as noted above, might as well not have bothered crossing halfway for all the threat they offered until around the 70-minute mark; but our heroes, for all their possession, seemed to consider actually exploring the route to the opposition goal to be way down the list of priorities.

It was pretty infuriating stuff to behold, particularly in central midfield. Perhaps the weekly diet of Eriksen, with his keen eye and delicate thread of pass, has spoiled me, but none of those employed for the task seemed to cotton on the fact that taking their own sweet time about things, and looking sideways and backwards as a first instinct, served only to swell the massed ranks of Palace defenders.

Where Dembele or Winks will receive possession and immediately explore the options that lay in a northerly direction, yesterday Wanyama, Sissoko and Dele seemed to treat forward distribution as the absolute last resort.

A win is a win, as sure as eggs is eggs, and a goal from a set-piece has value in its own special way, but good grief – until we nabbed them on the counter late on there was precious little about which to beat the drum and yell a rousing chorus.

5. Hanging On. Again.

So after a turgid opening hour in which we hogged possession and did nothing with it; and a ten-minute spell after our goal in which we hogged possession and smoked cigars a little more nonchalantly than a one-goal cushion really merited; the game culminated in the inevitable nail-biting final twenty minutes in which we desperately clung on to the lead with the sort knuckle-whitening tension of which Hitchcock would have been proud.

On paper this string of victories, and the cosy position snugly ensconced within the Top Four, might give the uninitiated the impression that all is bright and breezy at Casa Tottenham. Oh that this were so.

The truth is that given the choice between an eternity spent in the fires of hell or the opportunity to escape and instead watch Spurs trying to close out a win, the souls of the damned would as likely as not opt for the never-ending flames, for there really is no strain upon the nerves comparable to seeing our lot doing the last-ditch routine for the final ten-to-fifteen, particularly given that they will have spent the previous half hour casually missing chance after chance.

Somehow, incredibly, we pull it off every time, in the sort of fashion that would have Houdini stroking his chin suspiciously. But this skin-of-the-teeth stuff seems utterly unsustainable; and if it is indeed sustainable it should frankly be banned on the grounds of being damaging to public health, because viewing it is enough to prompt any man of even the most regular constitution yelp in anguish and start birthing kittens.

Can someone please instruct our heroes to do the honourable thing and start wrapping up these matches by three or four goals so that we can all let the final ten minutes drift by with the serenity of an ocean cruise?

That aside, this was most satisfactory.

Need a Christmas present for the Spurs fan in your life? AANP’s own book, Spurs’ Cult Heroes is available on Amazon…