Gallery: Player Ratings – Manchester City 4-3 Tottenham Hotspur

Subs

Image 12 of 12

It wasn’t Llorente’s fault we lost our attacking threat when he appeared, except in as much as he is the very opposite of pace. But then remember the tortoise and the hair – it was Ferdinand Llorente who scored the winner against the run of play. He played with heart and ran himself into the ground for the cause. Davies and Sanchez came on to bolster the defence.

Match Summary

This night is already up there as one of the most dramatic in Spurs history but it is also up there in achievement. This is the furthest Spurs have ever been in Europe’s premier competition.

You just have to have watched Maurizio Pochettino’s reaction (and I think the reaction he directed towards Daniel Levy) to know how much winning in this competition means to him.

Will this also go down as the most characterful run in the competition’s history? Spurs should never have made it this far, never got out of the mini league stage, never triumphed in this semi final. And yet they did. This wasn’t about flair, skill or even playing well. It was a bloody minded refusal to know they should have been beaten.

There’s a joy to be had in this game for the neutral, for the student of high drama, but I can’t go there. I didn’t want the drama. Even in that last minute – to think we’d done all of that only for it to be snatched away and then gifted back!

Our defence, for so long exemplary, chose this night to crumble like stale bread. In midfield without Winks, Sissoko, Dier, Dembele – two complete midfields – we were woefully short. And yet, we kept refusing the logic of the night. From two minutes in, the script of City sweeping to justified victory was being written. Our spear carriers and bit-part players just kept getting in the way.

How to rate the players? The following judgements are woefully inadequate. I could slate several of the individual contributions throughout the game, perhaps I will. But these churlish remarks have to be set against the character and the achievement. I do ask myself why bother assessing this performance in these pure terms. They’re all ten in any other analysis.