The reason the Premier League is seen as one of the greatest football competitions in the world is that a game is never over until the final whistle - or until one team is truly out of sight (see Manchester united 8-2 arsenal). Once in a while, though, comes a game in which one team coasts from start to finish.
For Spurs fans, these stress-free, blood pressure-friendly encounters are very few and far between but Harry Redknapp's ticker could not have had an easier 90 minutes against Aston Villa last night if his doctor had written the match himself.
Villa fans must have been pretty worried by what they saw. We were impressive but we weren't tested by our opposition. They caved too easily in the first half, and then spent the second waiting to get back on the coach - there was simply no industry and no fight from them at all.
If there's one thing that Villa can do this season, it's score goals; Gabriel Agbonlahor's pace is a constant threat and it's always a concern that Darren Bent is going to prove himself to us at some point. But we needn't have worried.
Alex McLeish set up a defence-heavy side, possibly in the hope that their pace up front could hurt us on the counter. He obviously didn't do his research, however, as Younes Kaboul, Kyle Walker and Benoit Assou-Ekotto out-paced even his fastest assets whenever asked.
It's our front six that get the pundits and the punters talking but it took only two of them to do the damage as Gareth Bale and Emmanuel Adebayor twice combined to put us in firm control by half-time. That's not to say that the others weren't a threat. Luka Modric, Rafa Van Der Vaart and Aaron Lennon were relentless in probing the wings and switching possession trying to pierce their way through Villa's two banks of four.
The sixth member of our "front six" is surely up for debate. You would assume it was Scott Parker but Kyle Walker gets forward even more often and his power, pace and link-up play with Lennon are fast turning our right-hand side into a force almost as potent as our left.
At the Lane, we always give our guests chances and maybe Villa thought that if they just let us have the ball then they could hit us on the break when we slipped up - but we didn't slip up.
A noticeable change in our attitude last night was that we were in no mood to give the ball away cheaply. Even at our best, we have had a horrible habit of squandering possession with a difficult ball, when a short pass would do the job. But last night's possession stats tell the story; we had 59 per cent overall and a massive 68 per cent in the second half.
Modric and Parker were at the centre of the way we kept the ball for long periods, pushing Villa back, then tugging them out of possession and attacking the space created.
This morning's headlines suggest that the Premier League title is a possibility for us "on this form". I won't get that carried away just yet. We rode our luck against both Blackburn and Fulham and, although it's great to see us "grinding" out results, we've come mighty close to coming unstuck on a few occasions.
Having said that, if this is how we play while we're grinding out results, I can't wait to see us in top form.
No comments:
Post a Comment