[ad_1]
Up to sixth place in the table after a fourth win in the last five Premier League games. Three points out of the top four and two points clear of the defending champs with nine games to play. Star player at the top of the goal table and also at the top of the assist table.
They also have a pretty decent match, a cup final to look forward to and concerns about the insane backlog of matches in the final weeks of the season have faded this week. Yes, everything is quite optimistic at the moment in the normal and no-nonsense football club Tottenham Hotspur.
This was, inevitably, a strange soccer game. For most teams, a 2-0 win might suggest words like “routine” or “comfortable” or even “impressive.” Yet these are the Spurs, for whom 2-0 is an attention-grabbing marker. So how have they done it? Two null? It must have been a really strange game.
There is no doubt that the identity of today’s opponents helped. Even though Aston Villa did a smart job in the summer, it still can’t be helped that removing Jack Grealish from this Villa team affects them more deeply, more fundamentally, than removing any other player from any other club. in the division.
The first 30 minutes of this game were a perfect example of this. A completely reorganized Tottenham defense through a combination of José Mourinho’s points and the illness that ruled out Serge Aurier and Toby Alderweireld was, for once understandably, a disorganized disaster. It wasn’t that any of his four individual members were particularly bad, it was just that they were clearly four individual members. It never really looked like a back room in any meaningful way. That Japhet Tanganga and Joe Rodon, by far their two less experienced members, emerged with more credit was interesting and probably good news for the Spurs in the long run. Rodon, in particular, definitely seems to have that vaguely indescribable “it”.
But the fact that Villa has not managed a single shot on goal, not a shot on goal, a shot of any kind, until the 58th minute against such a defense, it seems that it could be something unprecedented for a team at home against a opponent right above them on the table. This should have been a match of equals, however, even in current Spurs funk and with a back four seemingly introduced to each other for the first time 17 minutes before kickoff, the gap between the teams was huge.
By the time Villa had that opportunity, they were already behind and received a lesson in how to seize an opportunity. Carlos Vinicius, got off to an unusual start in a move that officially brought Harry Kane back to the 10th role in which he spends half his time anyway, pursued a seemingly lost cause, and forced a weak clearance from Emi Martinez. Lucas Moura – Today’s Spurs man of the game and in the midst of his most consistent streak of showing for the club, he played a double with Kane before taking on Vinicius to score his first Premier League goal and his 10th in the season in all.
Until then, Kane’s 10th most permanent role hadn’t quite worked out. But gradually, he became more influential and the Spurs seemed more and more comfortable. Villa’s anemic threat certainly helped.
Kane himself got second after winning a penalty with more of a shadow than the Spurs conceded in the NLD a week earlier, his own foul distracting him from the fact that the defense was clumsy and stupid. However, there was never any doubt that he would take advantage of the penalty shot once awarded, helping himself to his 160th Premier League goal and one that evens it out with Mo Salah at 17 of the season.
With Villa offering so little and the rare comfort of a 2-0 lead rather than Spurs’ more traditional one-goal leads that wreck nerves and cause mistakes, the final 20 minutes saw the Spurs playing with something close to the trust. Even arrogance at some points. They really are capable of being a good team, sometime in the future. –
And that’s the thing. The times when this performance got a little risky were the relatively rare occasions when Villa forced or the Spurs decided to retreat to their happy, self-destructive place sitting behind the ball. It doesn’t work, it won’t work, it has constantly been proven not to work. Spurs are still unlikely to be able to review Chelsea, based on what we’ve seen from both teams in recent weeks, and even holding off the teams below them, Liverpool most obviously, will be a challenge. You still feel like if this Spurs team really got close to accomplishing something, they’d find a way to make a big mess. But maybe not. And the exception to all this is the Carabao final. Manchester City are the only team where José’s preferred tactics could not only work, but have already done so this season. And the other reason the Spurs will win that game is because the jokes dictate it.
In November, everyone in football had to start preparing for the possibility that José Mourinho and the Spurs could win the league. That’s no longer a concern, but given everything that’s happened, it’s possible that Mourinho will win a trophy and finish in the top four this season with this team after … it could all make it even more excruciating than winning the league. And with just a couple of months to go, that is still dangerously possible.
[ad_2]