Quite an entertaining game this, much better than the bore draw with Hearts a few weeks ago. The noisy and, judging by the TV pictures, largely bare chested Greek crowd were treated to the sight of only one Spurs first teamer on the pitch but Kyle Walker and the ten changes from Saturday put on an excellent display and despite the home team missing a penalty in the first half and hitting the bar at the death got a draw they deserved.
It wasn’t always easy to tell who was who or what was what from my spot in the pub but it looked like Carroll had another better than useful game with Livermore, Giovani and Falque also prominent. Kane hustled and bustled well and was desperately unlucky to be shown a yellow card instead of be awarded a penalty when he was brought down in the area. Townsend again showed oodles of confidence down the left even though he was out of position at left back.
PAOK’s best period of possession came during the last 5 minutes or so when Townsend’s head would’ve come close to unscrewing from his neck given how often he was forced to turn and chase balls played in behind him. Cudicini came to the rescue with a couple of good saves.
Falque came closest to scoring for us having one shot cleared off the line and seeing another curl just wide.
So a solid beginning to the group stage and as I said a good performance from a group of players we’ll be getting a lot more familiar with during the coming months.
By MF
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