Opinion: J’Neil Bennett – Spurs’ star performer against Enfield

J’Neil Bennett starred for the Tottenham U23s last night as they ran out comfortable 4-0 winners against Isthmian Premier League side Enfield Town at the QE Stadium.

Bennett scored twice, one in each half, to give Spurs U23s back-to-back pre-season victories, following on from a resounding 6-0 win over Ramsgate on Saturday. This article will take a greater look at Bennett’s performance and briefly touch upon some of the other stars who lit up the Enfield Town pitch last night.

Two years ago, Bennett burst onto the scene when he was the maiden goal scorer at the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium after he opened the scoring for the Tottenham U18s against Southampton in a test event. Two years on, he could be certainly giving Nuno Espirito Santo’s food for thought to feature him in the first team’s remaining pre-season fixtures against lower league opposition.

Bennett started on the left-wing against Enfield Town and was a thorn in the side of the trialist who was lining up Enfield from minute one and was rewarded for all his efforts in the 22nd minute when he cut in from the left and curled a beautiful strike from just outside the box that flew past Nathan McDonald in the opposition goal. Bennett was unlucky not to double his tally minutes later when he did a carbon copy of his goal, but this time the ball hit the bar and bounced down and appeared to cross the line, but the officials played on.

The 19-year-old played a key role in Spurs’ second goal after he was involved in the build-up play that led to Kion Etete finishing off the move superbly. Spurs did get a third minutes later when a corner was turned into his own net by an Enfield defender. Bennett capped a brilliant evening’s work by sweeping home his second six minutes into the second half, following a brilliant flowing Spurs move. However, he was denied a chance to grab his hat-trick, when he was taken off in the 67th minute.

Overall, Bennett was the star of the show for Spurs at the Queen Elizabeth Stadium last night, as his pace and trickery were too much for the Enfield right back and even when Enfield changed it up in the second half, it didn’t do much to quell Bennett’s talent.

It will be interesting to see if Bennett will get a look into the first-team squad in the coming weeks, especially since Fabio Paratici and Steve Hitchin were in attendance last night.

The other stand out performers for Spurs were forward Etete, who took his goal superbly and was excellent in his link-up play, as well as Yago De Santiago Alonso, who was instrumental in the middle of the park and made that transition from defence into attack seamless at times.

Keep up to date with all the latest Tottenham news and opinion by following SpursWeb’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

Related Topics

Have something to tell us about this article? Let us know