Takeaways: Brighton 0-1 Spurs

Spurs returned to winning ways tonight with a hard-fought 1-0 win over Brighton at the AMEX Stadium.

The victory arrived courtesy of yet another link-up between Heung Min Son and Harry Kane, with the latter heading home early on in the first half for his 8th goal of the season, and our 9th headed league goal of the season so far, evidence of our newfound prowess from aerial attacks.

In what has been a testing week for the club on and off the pitch – an NLD defeat, a trip to Germany in midweek, and of course, the passing of the influential Gian Piero Ventrone – the players stepped up in the face of adversity and this is what I take to be the most commendable aspect of our performance.

This sentiment was echoed by Antonio Conte, who was clearly moved before and after the match by the tributes paid to his long-term friend Gian Piero. Perhaps the most fitting tribute to the man nicknamed the ‘Marine’ came in the players’ performance on the pitch, as Conte alluded to in his post-match interview with BBC Sport:

“It was a really tough week for us, not only for me – my staff and players and all the Tottenham environment.

“He was a person who was in the heart of every single Tottenham person. It was really tough for us. Tomorrow is the funeral, we will go with the staff. It is very difficult for me to speak about the situation because it is difficult to understand what happened.

“At the end to win a game today against a really strong team like Brighton it shows that I can count not only good players but also good men.

“I try to stay very close to his family because I have known them for a long time. Sometimes life is not always positive things. There are bad situations but at the same time you have to be good to cope with those moments in the right way.”

“It was a good response [to the derby defeat] but we played a really good game with personality at Frankfurt in the Champions League.

“Now we have the chance to play two games in our stadium, our fortress. It is important for the fans to create a good atmosphere in our next game to push us until the end.

“I prefer in this game to start with two strikers because in this moment we have injuries. I am happy because I had a good response from Matt Doherty, Yves Bissouma played from the start, a lot of positive things.”

As Conte alluded to there, plenty of positives can be taken from the game, not least the three points and a very tough away game ticked off the list. Indeed, Doherty and Bissouma both impressed in rare starts, and the change in system to 3-5-2 (that many have been calling for on this site for a while!) proved to be decisive in the end.

If anything, the system change served to flummox Brighton in the opening exchanges (arguably our best spell of the match) as confessed by Brighton coach Roberto De Zerbi, speaking to Sky Sports via the BBC:

“After the first 15 minutes I made a mistake in those 15 minutes because I thought Antonio Conte would play 3-4-2-1 but 20 minutes before the game he changed 3-5-2. After the first 15 minutes it was only Brighton.”

It may indeed have been “only Brighton” for the rest of the match, but this supposed dominance amounted to minimal threat throughout the game’s remaining exchanges. Like most of our opponents this season, Brighton had more of the ball (58.7% to 41.3%), had more shots (14 to our 8), but their “clear-cut chances” figure amounted to the grand total of “1” (figures via Sky Sports).

I know that many supporters will moan and groan about being ‘overrun’ and ‘outplayed’, but if being overrun and outplayed results in us reducing our opponents to virtually no clear-cut chances and winning 1-0 most weeks, I’m not going to complain, especially in tough fixtures like this against opponents that don’t give much away.

Let’s not forget, this lot has not lost at home since March, so tonight was always going to be about grinding it out rather than using any flair to wipe the floor with our opponents.

My only worry from the match was the regularity with which we gave the ball away. Courtesy of SofaScore, Bentancur lost it 15 times, Hojbjerg 12 and Bissouma 7, which is just as good we had the extra body in there to make up for a midfielder losing the ball.

Other players were guilty of this, especially Son (lost possession 15 times) and Kane (14 times), which is something that was evident in Frankfurt in midweek and an issue that readers have regularly alluded to this season as a whole.

Going forward, along with a lack of clinical finishing, taking better care of the ball has to be a priority. I don’t mind ceding possession in harmless areas, but giving the ball away against more threatening opponents (as we saw in the NLD) will yield more unsavoury outcomes than what we saw tonight.

Let’s keep working, let’s keep improving, but for now, let’s be grateful for our position in the league and our response to recent adversity. Bring on Frankfurt, COYS!