Tottenham’s 1-0 victory over Portsmouth at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday secured their passage into the fourth round of the FA Cup, where a trip to Preston awaits them. Have your say on the weekend’s victory on the Vital Spurs Fan Forum here, or continue reading for my conclusions from the match.
First, after ten consecutive matches of conceding first, Spurs have now scored first in back-to-back matches and kept successive clean sheets to see out another win after last week’s rout of Palace. So on the surface, it all looks great – but, like the Palace game, the nature of Spurs’ performance still left a lot to be desired.
It seems like our lot can only play well in bursts, and just as a four-goal splurge in a 25-minute blitz did the job at Selhurst Park, a 15-minute spell of pressure (split across either side of the half-time interval) on Pompey’s goal on Saturday saw us over the line.
Just before the half-time whistle, Spurs were just started to knock on the visitors’ door, and hit the post through Emerson Royal just after the interval, with Harry Kane’s decisive goal coming immediately afterwards. Bar Oliver Skipp’s sitter 15 minutes later, that was as good as it good for Spurs. Although I am not a fan of sporadic performances, it may very well be the case that the lads were instructed to win with minimal energy output, with bigger challenges on the horizon.
With regards to Skipp, who was coming in for Yves Bissouma, who himself withdrew from the starting line-up at the last minute due to an ankle injury, I was not overly enamoured with his performance. It’s never easy coming into an XI with such short notice, irrespective of the opposition you’re facing, but he’s played enough games at senior level now against sterner opponents that more should be expected of him.
Nevertheless, it was the first time that he and Pape Sarr had started together in a competitive fixture, and it is never easy playing next to someone who you’ve never partnered in the middle of the park before, whether that’s against a League One side or a Champions League outfit. On the whole, however, I did not see enough from either of them to make me go “WOW!”
The same can be said for most of the team, particularly Bryan Gil and Heung-min Son, who offered next to nothing whenever they got on the ball. This was particularly disappointing for me, as both were seeking to build on their respective positive moments from the Palace win, whether that was Gil’s urgency at Selhurst Park to create one goal and contribute to another two, or Son finally breaking his long goal drought.
Again, I don’t know how much of this “playing within ourselves” is deliberate – at times, it seems too relaxed and lethargic to not be – but whatever it is, we need to buck our ideas up with the tough run of fixtures the rest of January is serving up. All that matters, for now, is that we’re into the next round of the cup – onto Arsenal on Sunday…