Tottenham Hotspur headed into tonight’s Champions League quarter-final second leg against Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium.
Although we lost Harry Kane in the first leg and have had other significant injury issues to contend with, we did welcome back Dele Alli with his fractured hand for the tie, and confidence was high we could pull off a result and reach a first ever semi-final given we had the advantage through Son Heung-Min’s late winner back at our new White Hart Lane Stadium.
It was a blistering start and City levelled aggregate up with their first effort on target four minutes in, but Spurs rallied quickly and Son Heung-Min grabbed the potentially all important away goal to tie the scores up as we ticked into minute seven and the South Korean genius set hearts fluttering three minutes later as he made it 2-1.
Game ON and it was, one minute later it was 2-2 and if nothing else it was going to be a cracker and a credit to football.
21 minutes in City had the advantage at 3-2 and that’s where we finished at halftime.
Then it went wrong, they got the all important aggregate goal to turn our away goals into nothing as they made it 4-2, and given the injury to Moussa Sissoko, the game had turned against us properly.
We got back into it though at 4-3 as Fernando Llorente scored in the 73rd minute to set up an interesting end.
The common consensus is that butt didn’t lie although the Video Assistant Referee system helped us on our way.
All I can say, what a cracking example of what football should pretty much be. We came out on top, and whilst some may shake their heads at me saying this, City fans should be proud of their efforts as well.
Ah Champions League semi-finals…even as an optimist I didn’t expect to be typing that tonight. My glass half full is now overflowing so guess it makes sense to drink it.
4-4 on aggregate, bloody love away goals me.
Etihad Stadium
Champions League Quarter-Finals - 2nd Leg
17/04/2019 9:00 pm
Referee: Cakir
| Manchester City | Tottenham Hotspur | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sterling (4, 21), Bernardo Silva (11), Aguero (59) | Son Heung-Min (7, 10), Llorente (73) | ||||||
| Ederson | Lloris | ||||||
| Walker | Trippier | ||||||
| Kompany | Alderweireld | ||||||
| Laporte | Vertonghen | ||||||
| Mendy | 84 | Rose | 91 | ||||
| De Bruyne | Wanyama | ||||||
| Gundogan | Sissoko | 41 | |||||
| Silva | 63 | Alli | |||||
| Bernardo Silva | Eriksen | ||||||
| Aguero | Son Heung-Min | ||||||
| Sterling | Lucas Moura | 82 | |||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Stones | Sanchez | 91 | |||||
| Sane | 84 | Walker-Peters | |||||
| Fernandinho | 63 | Llorente | 41 | ||||
| Mahrez | Foyth | ||||||
| Otamendi | Gazzaniga | ||||||
| Gabriel Jesus | Davies | 82 | |||||
| Muric | Skipp | ||||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 20 | Goal attempts | 11 |
| 8 | On Target | 7 |
| 4 | Corners | 3 |
| 8 | Fouls | 12 |
| 0 | Yellow Cards | 4 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 66 | % | 34 |