With Tottenham Hotspur taking all three points from a difficult Premier League opener against newly promoted Aston Villa on Saturday, despite our dominance in the game, and further improvement in the second period, the match really only opened up properly in our favour following the introduction of substitute Christian Eriksen.
With Eriksen’s future remaining in doubt given the state of play with his contract and the fact the European window remains open until the end of the month, his performance will do nothing to quell the speculation and having been introduced in the 63rd minute by manager Mauricio Pochettino, the 27-year-old Danish international quickly contributed three shots (one on target) and three key passes as goals from Tanguy Ndombele and a Harry Kane brace brought us back from behind, to take a 3-1 win.
Former player and now pundit, Jamie Redknapp had some curious comments about Poch’s summation of the game as he spoke to Sky Sports following the game, but I think few will disagree with his comments about Eriksen.
“Personally, until Eriksen came onto the field, I didn’t see Spurs winning that game. Mauricio said that he felt his side were better in the second half, but I’m not so sure. When he came onto the pitch, the tempo changed, the pace of the passing changed, you could see every time a Spurs player got the ball, the first player they looked for was him. He changed the whole tempo of the game. I think it was more to do with him than anything else. They’ve got no Dele Alli and No Son today, so they were missing some important players but Eriksen showed his importance to the team today.”
Redknapp did heavily bang the drum that Eriksen was worth breaking the bank for in our structure because of his importance to the side, and plenty in the fanbase will agree with that, but given his own words about being open to a fresh challenge, we’ll have to see if there is actually a question to answer or whether the speculation has been just that.
Previous Article:
23 y/o Arrives In London But Spurs Lose Out In Dybala Chase