I still think he's doing Ken Dodd impressions! He comes over quite tittyfilairious....if you know what I mean!
The Spurs defence has conceded 19 goals in 4 PL games and 14 in the other 24. The latter stat is impressive. The ability to grind out results - even if uninspiring at times - is a useful quality and not one associated with Spurs until this season. The teams above can score goals, but all but Chelsea have a defensive Achilles heel. The top 4 race looks interesting now with Arsenal far from certain to feature. Looking at all the points thrown away by Utd by silly defensive errors is very frustrating. Those ugly results - or failure to get them - make such a difference.
Dembele seems a perfect indicator of the quality of our opposition: against big teams he's very good, against weak teams very poor. Nice crystal ball. When you pay 28 million for a striker, and he has one goal (now two) in open play in the PL, there will only be one story. What that story misses is that he has nine in all competions (in about 30 games)--somewhat disappointing but not too bad. More important is not the four assists, it's been that by my count he's comfortably ahead in the pass before the assist list on Spurs. Then add in that we hardly score, so his goals, assists and passes before the assist have tended to get us three points, and you get a player who's come very near justifying his price tag in terms of the points he's gotten the team. As opposed to a certain other player, whose glory spell coincided with his team winning by 2 or three goals a game, and, I suspect, didn't get half as many points for his team...though that may be a topic for another thread... Lennon has been a and often the key player for our team. I still wonder if he's carrying some kind of chronic injury, as he hasn't gone on as many dribbling runs as he used to. Even so,he tends to do a decent job of getting in deep and cutting the ball back, as well as working very hard on defending. Townsend finally helped produce a goal today, but I'd take Lennon by a mile, still, over Townsend. You'd have to be Roy Hodgson to think otherwise. COYS! While winning and losing form seems important in my experience, how you win or lose doesn't seem to make much difference. I'm not pessimistic or optimistic. Let's just see how the Chelsea game goes. It would be tempting to do a variation on the Newcastle lineup, with Sandro, Dembele, Paulinho and Bentaleb, to try to win the midfield battle and react to the fact that Chelsea's midfielders are on the small side.
Spurs are right around their record PL points total despite being crap most games, all because we've managed to get three points by the skin of our teeth any number of times. You'd rather win them all 4-0, of course, but winning the close ones, or failing to do so, will determine your fate.
Just watched the replay of the Soldado goal again and I can't remember being so delighted to see a player finally score a goal, even after watching it twice! Still, one aspect MOTD reminded me of, was Adebayor and Soldado spend far too much time outside the box, I commented on this re Adebayor earlier in the season and at one point they showed Townsend on the wing and both Adebayor and Soldado lurking way outside the box, there is far too much focus from strikers to try and play outside the area and while we can't argue with Adebayors end product, if we are to play 4-4-2, one striker has to work the penalty box more.
What's the story with impeding the goalkeeper then? We nearly conceded yesterday because of that, and it was not the only time they employed the 'tactic'. It seems some refs are looking for it, and others miss it or don't see it as an infringement. Though how they can possibly keep up with everything happening in the box is beyond me (and them) and they are their own worst enemies for not saying they need video evidence (or just have big egos). To me it's simple obstruction, but would be interested to hear from someone who knows the laws better than me.
Best player on the pitch yesterday by a country mile was Gary Medel, we managed to keep you lot quiet for very large parts of the game, hence the quietness of your crowd, personally i though we deserved a draw. Plus, why was it you sold Caulker again ?
A lot of us wondered this when we did it. I only watched the last 25mins or so, but it was pretty one-sided during that time. We didn't create many chances but there was very little danger of us conceding.
Vertonghen's piss taking move, which is apparently referred to as a roulette: please log in to view this image
Remember when we sold you Robbie Keane? Plenty more where he came from if you can scrape together the cash. I feel a lot better about the game today. 1.9 points per game on average. That's normally enough for 4th, yeah? Yeah?...
