Spurs made it three wins out of three at home this season and four wins from six overall to continue our unbeaten start to Premiership proceedings with a 2-1 victory over Fulham.
Hojbjerg’s second strike of the season and Kane’s fifth were responded to by a late reply from Mitrovic, but, in professional Conte fashion, the lads saw out the remaining minutes comfortably and we marched on to our 14th point from a possible 18.
As some readers mentioned in the pre-match discussion, the scoreline did not do us justice, and we were more than worthy winners today. This sentiment was shared by opposition manager Marco Silva, which I find rather refreshing, as it is so rare for managers to concede that their side were worthy losers. However, this is just what Silva did today, as relayed by the Evening Standard:
“Tottenham deserved three points, our first half was not good enough, we didn’t get to our standards. On the ball, we were not at our level, even without high pressure from Tottenham, we took many wrong decisions on the ball first half.”
This high pressure from Tottenham that Silva spoke of was a far cry from Wednesday’s whimper at the Hammers. As relayed by Spurs’ official website, we had 23 efforts on goal, 8 of which were on target, hit the woodwork twice, and had two goals disallowed.
We really should have done more with this dominance, and some of our wastefulness in the final third today takes me back to the drum I’ve been hitting since our opening day victory over Saints, and in reality, beyond that. Clinical finishing and decision-making have been perpetual weaknesses of ours – in such matches, teams like Manchester City simply steamroll their opposition (as I write this, they have just been held to a draw at Villa Park, so that hardly does my narrative any favours does it!).
This was attested to by Antonio Conte, who pointed out our need to improve in this department, as relayed by Ham High:
“If I have to find a situation that we need to improve, it is to be more clinical because when you create so many chances, you have to score but we scored two goals disallowed, then the crossbar.”
As some readers were also saying in the pre-match discussion, the prime culprits I feel were the wing-backs today, more so Sessegnon than his more conservative counterpart Emerson. Indeed, both get into great positions – offensively and defensively – but Sessegnon in particular had the beating of Kenny Tete down Fulham’s right all afternoon, yet lacked the crossing accuracy of Ivan Perisic or the confidence to beat a man when doing so would have given him a clear run at Leno.
That said, I do have a lot of admiration for the way both have markedly improved their game in recent months under Conte. For all his shortcomings going forward, Emerson has been solid at the back this season, whilst Sessegnon was a menace all afternoon, setting up Kane’s goal, forcing a great save from Leno, and unfortunate to have another assist for Richarlison denied by the VAR officials. Good work from both, but at the same time, improvement is needed.
Luckily, the improvement was seen across the rest of the team as we survived Mitrovic’s late reply to consolidate a promising position towards the top end of the table. Our best start since 16/17, where we made an identical start to proceedings, winning 4 and drawing 2 of our opening 6 games. Our next league game after that? Manchester City…we all know how that went!