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Tottenham Hotspur Match Reports
Tottenham Hotspur 0-1 Manchester City: Spurs fall in hard-fought match
It’s not a footballing, but it sure felt like one.
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Tottenham Hotspur have found life at home difficult in this Premier League campaign, and while they fought valiantly against defending league champions Manchester City, they weren’t able to summon up enough offense to put the ball in the back of the net today. Despite a dominating second half and numerous big chances, Spurs fell behind to an Erling Haaland tap-in goal in the first half and couldn’t find the back of the net. Haaland had a second ball in the net deep into injury time, but was called back by VAR for a handball. Tottenham had numerous good chances to complete the treble against City, but instead fell at home with the final score 1-0.
It was a good performance against a very good team, but another one goal loss on the season. Here are my match reactions.
Match Reactions
This was a weird game. City could’ve legitimately been up 3-0 in the first half, but considering Spurs’ dominance in the second half it almost feels like Tottenham got football’d in this one.
Spurs have broken Pep so thoroughly that it looked for a while like Guardiola started the match playing a 4-4-2. This comment should have that meme of the guy sitting in a chair made out of his own brain.
City’s early goal was annoying in that not only did Spurs not mark Haaland well right in front of goal, but it came off of a Brennan Johnson deflection. Ugly-ass lucky goal, but probably one that should’ve been prevented.
The first half was mostly Tottenham having a bunch of the ball but in inconsequential positions and them not able to get the ball to the attackers in dangerous areas. Meanwhile, Doku was terrorizing Pedro Porro on the right and City were able to get numerous chances on target.
Vicario had a solid half, including one save made at full stretch. He barely had to do anything in the second half.
I’m all for rotation (and even better, the OPTION of rotation) but I’m not sure this starting lineup was the right one against City, even one in bad form. Brennan Johnson is not great against pressing teams, and Odobert and Tel showed flashes of ability but not enough to make a difference.
Every time we play City I always forget how much Pep instructs his players to tactically foul and how much it annoys me when they get away with it. City got away with so much violence in this match. How Spurs ended up with three yellows and City none is beyond my ken.
This might have been Lucas Bergvall’s best match with Spurs to date. Still a little bit of youthful folly (to steal a Severance phrase) but his carrying into space is just so good right now.
QUAD SUB! QUAD SUB! QUAD SUB! That was fun! And while Spurs had been doing well to get back into the match, I agreed with every one of the four subs.
Haaland’s second goal that was waved off was a bit confusing, but apparently the call on the field was a handball on Haaland and VAR couldn’t find conclusive evidence that it was NOT a handball, so the call on the field stood: no goal.
I think Djed Spence is better than Destiny Udogie right now, and Archie Gray had one of his best matches in a Spurs shirt today.
I really feel like Spurs deserved an equalizer in this one, but there’s not much to be upset about in this one. Tottenham played well, rested their players, and look much improved from the dire days of December and January. I’m still high on this team bouncing back and ending up with a respectable league finish.
No game this weekend, so Spurs’ next match is next week in the Europa League at AZ.