From Erik Lamela and Harry Kane’s “dives”, to Liverpool all but ending Spurs’ 2016 title dream. Once, this was a relatively benign rivalry, but in recent years it has been laced with vitriol.
Now, Tottenham and Liverpool have more in common than that which divides them. What are their aspirations? Top four? Becoming the best of the rest?
Neither is hoping to catch Manchester City, and if you ask Jurgen Klopp, any club bankrolled by a Gulf state is not even worth wasting your breath chasing. Better to lower your expectations. Still, no one could have envisaged Liverpool sinking to quite these depths, with two consecutive defeats to teams in the relegation zone.
Spurs’ own mini-crisis has evaporated. Bournemouth and Marseille both found that Antonio Conte’s men never say die and, for all the complaints about a gruelling pre-World Cup schedule, they have that extra 1 per cent in stamina that has inspired them to two back-to-back wins in injury time. This is the opposite of what Tottenham are supposed to do.
Victory at a hostile Stade Velodrome was the manifestation of all that is to be admired about this Spurs team. For all the criticisms that have been levelled at them this season, they have one of the most effective central midfield pairings in the league in Rodrigo Bentancur and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, who, it turns out, has an excellent finish on him as well. Bentancur’s pressing is unmatched: no player has won possession in the midfield third more times than him in the Champions League this season. And for the final goal, Kane executed the counter-attack perfectly – the pace, the pause, the precision of the pass. The blueprint of a Conte side.
What a way to win your group!!!
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) November 1, 2022
Hojbjerg scored this beauty with the last kick of the game to secure the top spot in group D having gone behind in the first half…
What a turn-around!!#UCL pic.twitter.com/PBITDlh9js
Yet their insistence on waiting an hour before they decide to start playing cannot be explained so easily. There is no feasible way that this is what one of the most accomplished managers in world football has asked of them – lose 25 per cent more tackles than the opposition; invite Marseille to create 69 attacks to your 25, rely on a man-of-the-match performance from Hugo Lloris; welcome an incessant onslaught that is pure misery for those who have paid hundreds of pounds to flinch repeatedly behind a mesh of safety netting. At least the supporters at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday will not be treated with total contempt, as they were in France in midweek.
It was, in some ways, a terrifying trip, but at least Spurs came out of it top of Champions League Group D. Everything turned out OK in the end – they just lack control, and there is a sense that they are not quite in command of their own destiny pervades.
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Liverpool's Bellingham move delayed, Newcastle's new facilities and Sheff Utd's social spyware03 November, 2022Liverpool, meanwhile, can feel their season slipping away before you can say “thank God for the unseasonable weather in Qatar that is forcing our normal calendar to be interrupted”.
The Reds go into the game closer to the relegation zone than the top four: 12 games, four losses, four draws, four wins. Alarmingly, they ran 11km less than Leeds last weekend, another sign this creaking, ageing group are feeling the pressure like never before.
The question is whether Tottenham can compound their misery without Richarlison and possibly Dejan Kulusevski, who is training but was deemed too big a risk to play against Marseille.
Conte can usually cope with injuries in attack by chucking Yves Bissouma into the mix and ditching his beloved 3-4-3 – but now Son Heung-min is a doubt too as he requires surgery for a fracture close to his eye suffered on Tuesday night. Cristian Romero is out too and will probably not play for Spurs before the World Cup – though he will be back to represent Argentina at the tournament.
Both these sides would have welcomed the interruption of a mid-season flight to Qatar a fortnight ago. Now it is Liverpool who are firmly on the ropes, and there is no guarantee they will come out swinging. Tottenham have a golden opportunity to make that count.
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