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Tottenham’s attack will really have to be the best if they continue to defend like they did in Sunday’s 3-3 draw against West Ham. Gareth Bale’s second arrival at the Spurs inevitably attracted attention before the Hammers’ visit and the 31-year-old had the opportunity to write the perfect script, leaving Angelo Ogbonna on the grass as he cut inside and unleashed a shot with left foot in detention. -time.
Bale’s shot drifted off Lukasz Fabianski’s left post and the moment evaporated. Rather than provide the homecoming of a storybook, Bale’s failure encapsulated how the clinical Spurs must be given a porous bottom line that somehow managed to shake off a 3-0 lead in the most difficult circumstances. dramatic.
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It was one more example of Tottenham’s lack of a winning mentality or the cruelty that Mourinho has identified as the main obstacle preventing them from lifting silverware.
The Premier League is launching high-scoring matches across the division this season (Spurs know this all too well, having beaten Manchester United last time), but teams have yet to translate their superiority on the scoreboard when they enjoy the best periods. of game. Tottenham did that emphatically at Old Trafford and it looked like they had done it again here, rushing to a 3-0 lead against a West Ham side completely baffled by Harry Kane’s move.
Midway through the first half, Hammers manager David Moyes could be heard trying to add his voice to a tense conversation between central defender Angelo Ogbonna and midfielder Declan Rice. Each seemed to be arguing that the other should be responsible for picking up Kane, who was easily finding a space behind Rice and his central midfield partner, Tomas Soucek.
“His heist game is on another level,” Rice said later. “We had trouble dealing with him.”
What an understatement. The Spurs took the lead after just 46 seconds when Kane threw an excellent raked pass over the top to Son Heung-Min, who hit a shot with the unerring inevitability that comes from such a devastating partnership. Then Kane picked up Son’s pass, gave Rice a nutmeg punch and drove home a second, before Sergio Reguilón swayed over a cross from the left as the England captain headed home a third. .
Tottenham’s brilliant football for the first hour soon turned into the kind of sloppy, passive play that will undo your hard work trying to fight for trophies. Tottenham Hotspur FC / Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images
That header was Kane’s only touch in the area during a first half in which Mourinho’s blueprint looked very clear. With Kane falling deep to become supplier, Son and Steven Bergwijn repeatedly lunged forward to stretch a Hammers defense caught between shutting down Kane and pushing too high up the field to leave them vulnerable behind.
Son and Kane’s understanding seemed telepathic. With five goals and seven assists, Kane set a Premier League goal participation record in the first five games of a season. The pair have now combined for 28 league goals, a tally only improved in the division’s history by Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard (36), Thierry Henry and Robert Pires (29) and Sergio Agüero and David Silva (29).
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Sunday’s game threatened to be yet another dismantling of an opponent bewildered in the way Spurs beat United, but instead had the hallmarks of their previous League game at home against Newcastle, when they simply failed to kill the game. . Kane forced Fabianski to make a low save and then hit the post at the end of another wonderful sweeping play, all before the unlikely comeback began.
Fabian Balbuena headed an Aaron Cresswell free kick in the 82nd minute and Davison Sánchez converted a Vladimir Coufal cross into his own goal three minutes later. The visitors had improved markedly after halftime (Mourinho could be blamed for some of the blame here, as he couldn’t stop Michail Antonio’s growing influence when Moyes switched him to the left wide channel), but no one anticipated the surprising draw of Lanzini, hit first -time from a distance and finding the top corner.
Mourinho argued with some credibility after the Spurs are showing no signs of structural failures at the rear as they are conceding primarily on set pieces, so perhaps a revealing, almost throwaway line in a post-game television interview offered the most damning explanation.
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As West Ham’s comeback accelerated, Mourinho argued that “his confidence increased and my guys weren’t strong enough to deal with it psychologically.” He declined to elaborate on that point when pressed, even though West Ham offered clear symmetry like Mourinho’s first opponents when they raced to a 3-0 lead at London Stadium last November, only to concede. two goals at the end of the game and hold a 3-2 win.
“I don’t want to go there,” he said. “We have new players, we play much better than last season. I can also say the same for West Ham. West Ham is a much better team today than when Moyes arrived. The team is evolving, we know how we want to” play. We scored a lot of goals.
“I think there is a great evolution in the team, even defensively the team is much better than before. That’s why I was saying before, to look at the goals we conceded, it was only Danny Ings.” [in a 5-2 win at Southampton].
“After that, it was Newcastle penalty, Man United penalty, another Southampton penalty. Today, two side free kicks and an own goal. Defensively, we are much stronger, but in the latter part of the game, this happened and sometimes It is difficult to explain “.
There was a lot to like about Tottenham before their collapse. Tanguy Ndombele was a prowling presence in midfield, hinting at a resurrection that would add valuable stamina to his midfield, while that flash of Bale’s threat cutting right off offered a glimpse of the Son-Bale-Kane triumvirate that has so many Tottenham fans salivating. .
Mourinho has described the in-depth strength that Spurs have up front as the best group in terms of numbers he has put together in his career as a manager, which is no small accolade given his time at the helm of Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan. , Real Madrid. and Manchester United. Meanwhile, little blame can be attributed to Bale’s belated wastefulness, given that this was his first club-level appearance since June 24 after a game and a half for Wales in international service.
“It is a pity that he could not score the fourth goal that [would have been] a beauty and it would kill the game, but that’s football, “said Mourinho. It’s a shame Tottenham can’t afford to repeat.
Source: espn.co.uk
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