2020/21’s congested fixture list continues for Tottenham Hotspur as we have another speedy turnaround from European action and we look forward to this years’ trip to Stamford Bridge to take on Frank Lampard’s Chelsea team.
The game always has some spice to it for understandable reasons but I doubt the Pensioners will have yet forgiven manager Jose Mourinho for his u-turn and I significantly doubt we sit in top spot in front of them by two points, so there’s no way we can be complacent for this one as more than bragging rights are up for grabs.
As we know, Toby Alderweireld will be out for this one with his muscle injury, but it seems the club are pretty confident that Hugo Lloris, Erik Lamela and Steven Bergwijn will pass late fitness tests after the knocks they picked up over the last week which saw them miss out on Ludogorets.
Until we kick off, all eyes to the other fixtures to see whether we can open up a gap at the top of the table on Sunday – whichever way you look at this game, the result is the important thing, not specifically the performance but if we can keep our improvements going, even better.
Chelsea...
Win
Draw
Lose
Previous Article:
Debutants As Spurs Take A Stroll Through White Hart Lane – Match Stats
Not a classic.
Decent result for us and a clean sheet against one of the top scoring teams.
Many of us said we would take a point, me included, well we got it.
Don’t forget we were away from home and we’re top of the league.
We do need to create more chances now.
Roll on next fixture.
We’ll take that. We don’t get much change at Stamford Bridge. But we are back top. We’ll done the ref for his bookings which stopped Chelsea from too many niggling fouls. Our defence was spot on. Rodon did well but two mistakes could have cost us. Dier and Reguilon performing well. Good to see Aurier playing sensibly and being consistent. Well done Sissoko and Hojbjerg ( great signing) for keeping tight reigns on midfield. Love N’Dombele’s…Great feet but he still tires easily.I just need to comment on 3 of our recent signings who are good but not out of the top drawer. Bergjwin is a tryer and works hard but not particularly exciting. Lo Celso is very lightweight ( no where near an Eriksen) busy but only a bench player. What a miss . He could have won it and it was on his left foot.And the Doherty who has not lived up to expectations…poor crossing.This is nit picking but we must pick the best when making signings. But so pleased with today’s result.
Dead chuffed for Joe Rodon, fancy making your first PL start against the attacking talent at Chelsea’s disposal!
A couple of brain farts that he can be forgiven for in the circumstances, and anyway, the far more experienced Dier had two as well. :- )
wentworth – I assume you were talking about what Eriksen used to be. Because if you are talking about the Eriksen of this and last season then Lo Celsco is a far better player. Unfortunately without a time machine you can’t get the Eriksen of previous years back.
Solid point, well done to Roydon tough game for a full debut. Any thoughts on why bale wasnt used.
WW
Good sound post.
I would give Doh and Lo Ceslo a, bit longer.
Lo Ceslo Has had 1 pre season in the last 3 and Doh still needs to find his feet, he has had a stuttering season between internationals and this Covid thing, not to mention coming to a new team.
Similarly with Bergs, who has to try to live with Bale.
However if we do stay up top or get a trophy we can look to getting more top class( podium) signatures, however I don’t think we are far away even with our current squad.
I would suggest we currently have around our team about 5 or 6 players who are almost a constant 6 to 8 out of 10 if not above.
Lloris, Tobs, Hoj, N’Bers, Sonny, HK10, Refs with Bale knocking on the door.
I’ll go again.
See fekin spell checker. 🙁
Players we have around 6 to 8 out of 10 are.
Lloris, Tobs, N’Dombers, Regs, Sonny, HK10, with Bale getting there.
Sorry folks.
Yes Jod. Of course I was referring to Eriksen at his best. Two footed, could glide past players, terrific control, great free kicks, superb vision, fantastic passer of the ball. Not sure Lo Celso will ever be able to match up to any of these. He is busy but limited. Deadful miss today. We could get Eriksen back and I am sure Jose would make him into the superb midfielder he was. Our squad would be complete.
123spurs – I suspect its down to work rate. Bergwyn worked his socks off and he needed to. I doubt Bale could have done the same.
Mr Paul Gough – Mourinho’s already tried that, remember ? so did Pochettino before him and so did Conte after him. Fantasising about what’s gone won’t bring it back.
Hi Mr Paul Gough or maybe WW.
Not sure, but one of you said about picking the best.
Sorry but that currently ain’t Erikson he has fallen away and even a transfer hasn’t lifted his game.
He has gotten into that malaise along with Rose, Dembele, Verts,Tripps, Dave (oh yes) and (to a degree) Dele.
Something went wrong with us post CL or 2018 world Cup, and some of our players (previous) couldn’t get out of it.
Now reviewing the above list, this is how many marquis players we have had to replace also a manager who somehow lost his way.
We are currently on top of the Premiership for the second week, I’m gonna enjoy it, Coz I just did not envisage this at the start, I’ll enjoy the ride even for a short while.
But something just tells me….
Has anyone heard how Toby is? Hopefully he’s back for the Arsenal game.
Is it true Chelsea is a contender with a team of lampard? Silva at 36 yr old who can’t even play 3 games in 7 days? Ziyech, werner , who else?
And spurs with Bale, Kane, son, are not contender with a winning manager like Mourinho?
Which kid still listens to Mourinho?
Geof- Toby is out for 2 to 4 weeks, depending on how he recovers. Arsenal seems a bit early.
Thanks, BS.
Yesterday wasn’t a great game for the neutral but it’s the type of game where Mourinho feels that 1 point was a good haul.
It was always going to a be a classic Mourinho type of game. The detractors will hate it, but we stay top despite facing a very tough opponent away from home.
As far as Rodon is concerned, mostly good, but some dodgy moments as well. While that is perfectly acceptable for a young player and to be expected, it still doesn’t fill me with a great deal of confidence going forward. Toby can’t come back soon enough.
BelgianSpur – Rodon is raw certainly and we probably won’t see how good he actually is for a couple of seasons. But as a 6ft 4 out and out centre half he does give us something we haven’t really had for some time and against Abrahams I think the physical match up helped us. Against quicker, less physical, attackers I suspect Jose would go for Tanganga or Sanchez if Toby wasn’t available.
Well an excellent point and interesting what Jose had to say about the attitude of the dressing room after the match . I would think that there was frustration especially at the spoiling tactics they employed .
Come on guys give Rodon some slack . He played extremely well against a good attacking team . Ok he had that late moment but I think that he had been smacked in the face previuos to that .
We played some good football but in the 2nd half saw us revert to type when pressure was on by playing long balls and sloppy passing .
Pity about Celso making the wrong decision at the end but a draw was a fair result .
I think we now have a real chance of easily making the top 3 if not higher .
It did baffle me that there was no booking when Rodon was elbowed in the face and left with a bleeding mouth. Generally I thought the referee had a good game but that did confuse me. If someone had offered me 4 points from games against City and Chelsea beforehand I would definitely have taken them.
jod – Eric Dier is, at 6’3, only an inch shorter than Rodon and weighs the same. From a physical point of view, Rodon offers nothing more than Dier does. We’ve had that sort of player for a while.
Like him or not, Dier is Mourinho’s choice to be the dominant CB force in our 11. He is a favourite of Mourinho and will start most games. If we’re going to pair someone next to Dier, picking Rodon is basically just picking a younger version of Dier and offers little more.
We have other CB’s who offer something different to Dier, all with plusses and minuses:
– Sanchez, who has all of the physical attributes to be a top CB, is quicker than Dier, but is error prone;
– Toby, who has a better range of passing than Dier and is generally more reliable, but lacks pace;
– Tanganga, who is quicker than Dier but shorter, still relatively inexperienced and whose future may be at full back, if Mourinho has his way;
– and I suppose we could throw Davies in the mix, who can play the odd game at CB but who really isn’t a natural CB.
I reckon that Rodon starting at CB against Chelsea has more to do about Mourinho not fully trusting the other options at his disposal that day, and less to do with Rodon offering something we didn’t have.
Squad management also factored in the decision, I’m sure. Rodon isn’t registered for the EL, and I’m assuming Jose will want to save Dier for the PL.
This means that if Mourinho wants to continue to rotate as much as possible for the EL, he’s going to have to start Sanchez and Tanganga in the EL.
Until Alderweireld returns, Rodon is the pick to start PL games, almost by default.
Wow….I’m really surprised to see such negative comments about Rodon after just one full game. The young guy was making his first PL start against some of the best attacking talent in the league and helped keep a clean sheet. Did Chelsea even have a decent shot on goal apart from the Mount effort and the disallowed Werner goal?
Yesterdays game was all about defending as a team and Rodon played his part, from my perspective I would be quite comfortable seeing the same starting eleven against the gooners next Sunday.
I’m not really sure what was so negative about what I said. I said Rodon played OK but made mistakes – that’s a pretty factual description of his game.
It’s all a question of perspective. Did Rodon play well, considering it was his 1st game? Absolutely. Did he play well, when compared to Toby’s recent perofrmances? Maybe less so. They’re big shoes to fill and we can find all sorts of mitigating factors in favour of Rodon. But on another day, those mistakes could have cost us.
The Werner offside goal was one incident, there were mishit passes here and there but his biggest mistake was the underhit headed backpass which gifted Giroud with a golden chance late in the game.
It’s the unforgiving nature of playing CB in the PL – you can be great for 89 minutes and make one costly mistake which will dominate the headlines. Luckily for us, Giroud wasted the opportunity, but on another day, that was that. Should we just pretend like it never happened?
We kept a clean sheet, but that is just as much due to Chelsea’s poor finishing on the day than it is our defensive solidity.
BS…..I’m not sure why you don’t think your original post is negative regarding Rodon, your reply to my post is equally as negative whilst trying to assert that your first wasn’t.
TQ2Surs – you still haven’t said what was negative about it.
Is pointing out that Rodon made a few mistakes considered negative, now?
I said Rodon’s game was mostly good, with a few dodgy moments. That’s a 6,5 out of 10. Is that negative?
Can we not call out mistakes when we see them now?
Again, I think there is a big difference between trying to point out the good from the bad, and mentioning the mistakes while acknowledging the context (which is what I have tried to do factually), and trying to pretend like they never happened and/or that anything goes because it’s Rodon’s first game.
Just because he wasn’t perfect on his first game doesn’t make Rodon a bad player. It’s doesn’t lessen his potential. It just makes me, personally, slightly concerned about our defensive solidity.
I happen to rate Toby higher than Rodon at the minute, and i feel that no matter how quickly Rodon learns, we’re still going to miss Toby while he’s out. If that is being negative, so be it.