Tottenham 1-2 Aston Villa (Lo Celso 22′ | Torres 45’+7, Watkins 61′)
TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR STADIUM — Sit back and take a second, if you can. Recall the days of Antonio Conte at Tottenham Hotspur and imagine a scenario. Conte is without Harry Kane and a number of other senior players through injury and suspension. He is forced to play a defence full of full-backs and the midfield contained Bryan Gil and Giovani Lo Celso, two forgotten parts of a long-ago abandoned plan. Consider the pre-match demeanour, the scowls of a man pursuing a one-man fight against his own misfortune.
Now consider how the subsequent match may have gone for those watching, whoever Tottenham were playing. It would have been one for the purists, just so long as those purists were also sickos who didn’t like watching players having shots and had a fetish for people embarking on grand tours of self-preservation in their post-match dealings with the media.
Of course this means both everything and nothing. Tottenham were beaten at home by Aston Villa on Sunday afternoon and that will be the whole of the law for many. Those predisposed against Spurs will use any praise in defeat as a cause for great anger or humour or bitterness or all three. If this was my club, we wouldn’t be praised for this. Being perceived as a media darling is both a blessing and a curse. Someone will say “Spursy” soon and, more remarkably, someone will still find it funny.
But here’s the thing: Tottenham are fantastic to watch, for better and for worse. They finished eighth last season at the end of one of their most dismal, dull, dour campaigns in living memory and now their games are exceptional to watch.
They create chances by the bucketload but, there is a hole in their own. Their matches, Sunday’s being the prime example, are knockabout, playground stuff where you half expect a coach to run out and tell everyone to stop bunching around the ball. They concede a goal and everyone seems to act surprised, despite them allowing four clear shots in the previous seven minutes.
Ange Postecoglou has dealt with plenty during the last few months, including but not limited to the loss of his best player, best defenders and best midfielders either on temporary, extended or permanent bases. This autumn increasingly appears to be a two-month long game of Tottenham Hotspur Buckaroo during which you remove component parts of a squad and wait to see when everything rears onto its front legs and implodes.
Perhaps Rodrigo Bentancur’s latest injury was the tipping point. There was no control whatsoever in midfield when he left. In defence, Emerson Royal and Ben Davies are a centre-back partnership for the ages, if those ages are a parallel universe on a different planet. You can’t make things this weird and expect them to work out well more times than not.
VILLA LEAD!
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) November 26, 2023
What a finish! Ollie Watkins has his 7th Premier League goal of the seasonpic.twitter.com/wmIVp9Kxst
Aston Villa are too good now, under Unai Emery. They are plenty chaotic enough themselves, of course. At one point during the second half, Emery waved his hands down to try and calm down his players with such ferocity that you suspected that he might begin to hover half a foot from the grass. But they were virtually full-strength and thus precisely the weapons that Tottenham didn’t: a central striker in irrepressible form, a midfield capable of control as well as chaos, a magnificent central defensive combination and options on the bench.
As such, there will be slings and arrows. Questions will be asked as to whether Tottenham peaked in October, or whether the honeymoon period is now over. If there is one rule of Premier League life to govern all others, it is that three defeats in a row for a top-half club constitutes a crisis.
Sat in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, it could not feel less like one. Of course Tottenham are flawed. Of course they are missing Yves Bissouma, Pape Matar Sarr, Cristian Romero, Micky van de Ven, Bentancur, James Maddison et al. Of course home supporters would like to win every game and of course losing from a winning position hurts more than most. But I think they get it and I think we should too.
Stood in the away end, the wide eyes and bright spirits of a fanbase that is quickly getting caught up in thoughts of fairy tales and dreams. At this pace, Villa are on course for 82 points, 18 more than in any Premier league campaign since 1993. Their high line will provoke comprehensive defeat on occasion, but in the meantime they will swarm over lesser opponents and spook those fortunate to call themselves peers. They are also now ahead of Tottenham. They are the new top-four pretenders.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/Rfo96a1
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