Kane’s passing is the best in the league. Still make Arsenal big favourites for 4th but at least Spurs are keeping things interesting unlike Man Utd who seem determined to finish as low as possible
I know it didn't matter in the end, but there was inconsistent refereeing and it should be called out no matter the result. Firstly when Bentancur was pushed over. Surely that was done with far more violence and less provocation than when Son was sent off? Wasn't that against Bournemouth and hadn't the Bournemouth player just trod on his hand? But it's given as a yellow. Secondly when Joelinton, who was already on a yellow, took down Kane from behind. Surely that was a yellow card offence in itself and again should have resulted in a red. Mind you, that's two reds to the same player so only one of them could have happened. Of course he gets subbed off shortly after.
We got very little from Atkinson. I counted at least 5 yellows for Dan Burn, who seemed really riled up for some reason. If Bergwijn had missed I wonder if Burn would've gone off as he literally hauled Lucas down from behind.
Quick reminder that the Mag owner chopped up an innocent man with a bonesaw, took the parts to a restaurant and burned them with some other more fragrant meats to mask the smell. His team lost 5-1 today too.
1. When your MF is dominant like peak Pochettino era, then Kane is an awesome "lead the line" forward, with some degree of assists for his team-mates. 2. When the MF is not the above, Kane has shown that he can also be more of a contributor while still scoring a respectable goal total. The question for any opponent now becomes : Compared to our MF, what Spurs MF are we facing today ?? The answer to that determines whether we face Kane in mode 1 or 2 (and who is likely to be scoring against us) .
Passmap time please log in to view this image You can really see the trap being sprung here, where the opponents are invited to try and press high...and a few seconds later the ball's been moved between the back three and sent to the midfield pivot, leaving the opponents a man or two short as they've been rope-a-doped However, the most interesting thing is what happens when you compare our passmap to Newcastle's please log in to view this image Newcastle's setup is based on the assumption that Saint-Maximin would cause us problems, hence where he's popping up on the pitch and how he's getting regular service from Joelinton, Shelvey and Targett - but not only did Romero keep Saint-Maximin quiet all match long, it appears that we predicted this would be their approach given how often Romero's getting the ball directly to Deki through the gap created by inviting Saint-Maximin on, as opposed to the expected layoffs to Emerson What else really sticks out is the pinprick that is Chris Wood, who had the least amount of touches of anyone on the pitch (and probably less touches than some of the people playing beach volleyball in the stands when the score was 4-1), which indicates both how we kept him quiet but mainly how we starved the supply lines, which in turn meant they were more reliant on Saint-Maximin, which in turn meant that Romero was teeing up Deki
I think that a yellow for Joelinton's push was fine. The red for Son was excessive. The Brazilian fouled Hojbjerg almost immediately after that, though. I was sure that he was going to get a red for the pullback on Kane. Nope. Subbing him off was very sensible, but they had nothing when he went off. Burn totally lost it. The higher line in the second half didn't suit him at all and he went a bit mental. Moura did brilliantly to draw him in for the 5th goal, though. There's still a space for him in the squad, in my opinion.
Did anyone see what happened with Hojbjerg and Emerson holding their faces? The highlights that I've seen brushed over the former and omitted the latter entirely. Twatkinson virtually stepped over the Dane, despite him apparently having a head injury.
Spurs look very good in patches. Utd are permanently in first gear (unless Ronaldo does something special). All teams have tricky fixtures and Arsenal play both Spurs and Utd. But Utd aren’t good enough to get to the amount of points required - you just need to hope we might have a good day and do Spurs a favour.
