Villa Park, the whippet and beyond

In world footballing terms Sunday 20th wasn’t that important in the greater scheme of things, but in the life and history of Spurs it was another piece of the jigsaw to – hopefully – a successful and fabulous season ahead. Bouncing back from the defeat at White Hart lane against the boys who like forever blowing bubbles, we were matched against another claret team; Aston Villa. This time away from the Lane. With 63% of the possession we put in a good display. Two incidents though stand out. The whippet got his first goal for Spurs, on the back of his successful performance for his country, while Soldado also got his first goal – non-penalty goal – for Spurs. Soldado’s goal will give him lots of confidence to continue scoring. While Townsend’s performance was another exciting display of a growing and confident talent.

Granted we started off wobbly but quickly found our footing. As for Villa; they tried their hardest to break us down but good goalkeeping and a steady defence kept them at bay. But Spurs were impressive. Bringing on Benteke, for Villa, got the Villa crowd excited but it was quickly realised that he couldn’t break through to score for them. Overall a pleasing performance and result after coming back from that surprising defeat against the Hammers.

Another thing I noticed (compared to the West Ham game) was that Spurs looked more solid in all departments and had a better all round 11 working players playing together. Obviously lessons learnt, combined with a few changes, from our performance against Sam Allardyce’s claret boys.

One sad incident that mired Spurs good win was the throwing of the smoke bomb and hitting a linesman. But the police and ground staff acted quickly to deal with the problem. A pity then they didn’t do the same at White Hart Lane when the West Ham supporters threw a smoke bomb to celebrate their goal. Maybe that one needed to hit a referee or linesman as well for them to have acted upon it. But that is another story. This is about how we bounced back at Villa Park and saw the whippet grow another inch.

It is interesting that we sold Bale for £85 million and he was replaced by a young gem for nothing. In the transfer market of wheeling and dealings we are kings, now we just have to get our team of all-stars moulded into a tight knit instrument so that we can challenge for top honours. So far, so good.

Now we move on to our Europa cup match aboard against Sheriff on Thursday, then two matches at White Hart Lane in quick succession; both against Hull City. One in the league and one in the Capital One cup competition for a place in the Quarter-Finals. With those matches we can start to wipe that defeat at the Lane from our memories and look forward to AVB’s blue and white army marching into a new and successful chapter of Spurs history.

So Come On You Spurs.

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