Imagine this for a scenario. As usual Spurs start slowly but despite being swarmed over by Man City from the kick-off they are, thanks to the woodwork and a fine reflex stop from Lloris, still only one behind at the half hour mark. Silva has as ever been making the game look child’s play whilst the freakishly shaped Aguero is doing what all decent forwards do; make Dawson look very average indeed.
The home team though is not out of it. Whilst never even remotely matching the slick football of the visitors, they are gaining territory and getting the crowd behind them. Toure is booked for a hack at Dembele that will force the Belgian off at half-time. He then receives a second yellow for scything down Danny Rose just before the full back can wriggle free into the City area. Down to ten men they lose an equaliser to Dawson’s far post finish from Eriksen’s whipped ball in.
Things go from bad to worse for City as Aguero limps off with an unexplained knock. Dawson was losing his personal battle on the field but the record books will show one goal each in this first half. Despite being outnumbered City start the second half period and Dzeko looks certain to give them the lead until Rose appears from nowhere, almost Ledley like, to nick the ball away from his feet and out for a corner. Buoyed by this and lifted by the crowd, Spurs go on to…. Yes well, it didn’t quite turn out like that did it?
We were always going to struggle in this game and some hesitant passing, lightweight defending and too much reliance on an isolated Adebayor made it worse. To then get sawn off on all the big decisions by Marriner and his incompetent linesman was the last thing we needed. I’m not saying we wuz robbed of victory, only that we were denied any chance of well, any sort of result really. City were outstanding early on, miles better than us and any other team I’ve seen this season.
Given its recency and similarity the Liverpool defeat and this game and will become blurred in years to come, but also maybe in the more immediate future. What happened to Tim’s new 442 driven Brave New World? Yesterday we were back in a sphere of narrow & cramped hesitancy. With Lennon anonymous, our attack began and ended with a very frustrated looking Adebayor. I hope we go back to a two-pronged attack and launching the wingers at the weekend, it’s more fun if nothing else.
What’s happened to our injured players? Four of them started against West Ham last week, none of them were even on the bench yesterday. Where are they? Why are we bumping our heads against the transfer window with Capoue our only fit back up centre half – the same Capoue that we’re apparently touting round Europe with a price tag on his head? I don’t want to believe that the club doesn’t know what they’re doing, but sometimes it’s hard to escape that conclusion.
Having bought Man City a team perhaps the Arabs should buy them a crowd as well. Just the lower tier for a team in their position and sort of rampant form is pretty awful. Do I sound bitter? I probably am. I’m also bitterly disappointed at the reaction of some of the crowd to our side, especially Bentaleb and Rose. Two idiots near me spent a lot of the first half having a pop at Lloris as well for some reason. What’s the point and who do they think we are? Nothing could have made it more clear than yesterday’s performance that it’s all about the money money money and until we get some, anything we do in terms of challenging the top four is an excellent, punching above our weight, type achievement and it shouldn’t be forgotten.
We need to pick ourselves up for Saturday and Hull, a side who’ve given us two good games already this season. The only thing that was anywhere near warmed up at the start of the game last night was the scorching hot pie that took the roof of my mouth off. Finding some way to get the team switched on from kick-off at the weekend would be a good start on the road to stopping this sort of thing happening as frequently as it is. Four league and one home cup defeat already this season. Not good. COYS.
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