Tottenham Hotspur returned to winning ways with a resounding 4-0 victory over Crystal Palace last night. Read the match report here, the pick of the match stats here; player ratings here, and Antonio Conte’s reaction here. You can also have your say on yesterday’s win on the Vital Spurs fan forum here.
First of all – the run of conceding first has finally come to an end, and about time too! The overall poor first half performance – in which Palace could have easily twice taken the lead – made it is easy to forget how well Spurs started the match.
Granted, this start did not amount to much – namely, a few corners and a decent cross that evaded Bryan Gil – but it was still nice to break the run of conceding the first goal for the past ten matches, and it felt like one of those matches were we needed the first goal to stand any chance of winning.
This sentiment was shared by one of the goalscorers on the night, Matt Doherty:
“I guess that’s what happens when you score first – confidence starts to flow out of everybody, they are pushing forward and the quality we have when we are hitting teams on the break like that is pretty devastating”, Doherty told the club’s official website.
“Towards the end of last season we were scoring first against a lot of teams and then wiping the floor with them. We know when we score first, we’re a very hard team to beat.”
This brings me to my next point – the fact that we have seen this performance before. Just as the Villa performance was near identical to that of the Wolves defeat at home last season, yesterday’s win was very much reminiscent of the victory at Villa Park back in April, which we also won 0-4.
After a pretty average first half performance in which Hugo Lloris came to the rescue, Spurs stepped things up in the second half to blow Villa away, and the hosts had no answer. The only difference between the two matches was that Spurs entered that second half at Villa Park already defending a lead from Heung-min Son’s early goal, but the manner in which Spurs raised their performance levels to turn an edgy match into a stroll that day was identical to the shift in approach yesterday.
The changes were not even anything drastic – it was a case of moving the ball quicker, with more intensity and purpose than we did in the first half (bar the first fifteen minutes, before we Palace seized momentum and asserted their dominance).
Once we regained our poise, we were unstoppable, and I would like to see us move the ball quicker, get the ball out wide to the likes of Ivan Perisic as soon as possible, and push our wing-backs high up the pitch more often, particularly against the weaker sides. Once we did this, Palace had no answers – and the damage came and went in only a 25-minute spell or so.
This little purple patch left me completely perplexed as to where the real Spurs have been hiding all this time! If we can turn on and off like a tap when we want to, well then why do we only perform like this sporadically?
I know that sustaining “incredible” performance levels for 90 whole minutes is something that even elite sides struggle with – such is the ebb and flow nature of the game – but I would like to see us aspire to build up to this level rather than play well in dribs and drabs. One can only dream I suppose…
I guess having world-class player like Harry Kane to call upon can make us afford to turn up in patches. It is now 15 league goals for Kane so far this season, leaving him just two away from hitting 200 Premiership goals and matching Jimmy Greaves as Spurs’ record top scorer with 266 goals. Our upturn in fortunes in the second half was as much down to him deciding to take things up a notch as much as it was down to us moving the ball quicker and getting the ball out wide to stretch the Palace defence – when Kane turns up, we turn up.
I don’t often agree with Graeme Souness, but he got it spot on in the Sky Sports studio last night when lauding Spurs’ talisman:
“I think they will finish in the top four because they have him. Keep him fit. He is Mr Goals. And you’ve got a good chance of winning games if you’ve got him in your team.”
Whether or not we will sneak into the top four once more is up for debate, but what’s for certain is that a fit and in-form Kane is key to any hopes that Spurs harbour for this season and beyond.
With Kane seemingly back to his hungry self and Son’s four-month league goal drought finally over, here’s hoping that our big hitters can lead us to a more consistent run of form than the indifferent spell we’ve been subjected to over the past few weeks.