It felt both extremely predictable and somehow surprising as well, but Tottenham Hotspur took care of business in Frankfurt and progressed to the Europa League semifinals. With a winnable tie coming up in a couple weeks, the remaining six Premier League fixtures feel wholly pointless; there is nothing to be gained from the league (and a 17th-place finish would feel more comical than depressing at point).
Still, football will be played, and we are here to support that. Nottingham Forest seemed to have a shot at second place, but now are at risk of falling out of the top five and missing an unlikely Champions League berth. Forest have an important extra fixture themselves with the FA Cup semis against Manchester City on Sunday, but Monday’s contest matters just as much.
Tottenham Hotspur (16th, 37pts) vs. Nottingham Forest (t-5th, 57pts)
Date: Monday, April 21
Time: 3:00 pm ET, 8:00 pm UK
Location: Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London
TV: USA Network (US), Sky Sports Main Event (UK)
Consecutive defeats to Villa and Everton (ouch) put Forest in a tricky position. The run-in looks largely manageable, with only Chelsea sitting in the top half of the table, but any more dropped points is asking for disaster. No matter how the season ends up, it will have been an unequivocal success for Nuno Espirito Santo, but it will sting to choke away Champions League qualification should that be how it ends.
Back in December, Forest eked out a 1-0 win over Spurs at the City Ground in a match that featured the electric Fraser Forster-Archie Gray-Radu Dragusin combination. But with zero goals and 0.9 xG, it was again the Tottenham attack that deserves the blame, with 70 percent possession failing to translate into many serious threats of scoring.
What to watch: Sustained defense
Last week’s collapse at Wolves was nothing new during the Ange Postecoglou era, but it was an anomaly over the course of the past month. Spurs have kept just one clean sheet — and picked the right time to do so — but have mostly held opponents around 1.0 xGA recently, which is a reasonable tally given the prior level of performances, so a four-goal failure stood out, even with some rotation.
After convincingly shutting down a dangerous Frankfurt attack, it would be great to see the defense perform well again on Monday. Sure, there will be first-choice players on the bench again, but this is about building systemic consistency (and continuing to eliminate those costly individual mistakes, regardless of who that individual is). Maybe it feels late in the season to be asking for these things, but it is now or never for Postecoglou over the final month.
Forest has made its success out of its own defense, with merely league-average scoring figures. Nuno’s side has just two goals in its past three league outings and has found the net multiple times only once in the last six. Following up the impressive showing in Germany with another quality defensive performance is exactly what this Spurs squad needs to show right now.