Finbar O'Neill
IT seems that the footballing gods are favouring North London in the Champions League.
Even though I confess to being a big fan of Barcelona, the Goons (wait for it) showed a lot of courage and no little ability to turn around that game last Wednesday (for that compliment, I will be receiving 30 slaps the next time I meet the Mayo Spurs supporters).
However, Spurs have demonstrated yet again that some substance backs up their relentless buccaneering style. With the inevitable wobble of a few bad draws out of the way (Man U, which we should have won, and Newcastle, which we should have lost), Spurs have eked out nine points from three tough games. We have begun to reel in the top three.
To give them their dues, the team have been nothing short of unbelievable in the past few weeks. I was at the Bolton game and you could sense the deep frustration at the performance, yet we kept going. Spurred on by the roar which went up when the screen showed Newcastle had come back from four down against Arsenal to draw, Kranjcar sent a rocket into the Paxton Road end. Cue delirious celebration and a guaranteed hangover.
Spurs’ nine points in the last three games are remarkable for many reasons: injuries to key players, loss of form, tricky away fixtures (we hadn’t won at Sunderland since 2001!), and a fixture pile-up. All of this would have sufficed to lay low our hopes in recent seasons, but the resilience demonstrated by the squad and management has been totally surprising. Fulham was an aberration, and luckily it was in the FA Cup. Our last chance of silverware gone, you might think.
What happens then is that your worst fears about Spurs heading off to the San Siro are shown to be largely exaggerated. ’Arry saying we would attack became nonsense when the team sheet was read out. We had all the possession in the first 20 minutes, but very little to show for it apart from a couple of Crouch half chances and an injured keeper.
I was happy with the team – three workhorse midfielders and a half-fit Van Der Vaart made a good fist of it, but with Milan sitting back, we needed more attacking options than were available. Spurs will be grateful that Milan decided to actually have a go in the second half and they really put us under pressure – and it was here that ’Arry’s tactics came in to play.
I’m guessing he was expecting the onslaught for the full 90 minutes and planned to play them on the break or just lump the ball out of defence for Crouch to hold up and Lennon or Van Der Vaart to come on to. It only worked once, but when it did, we got the crucial goal. The defence played a massive part in the result too and Gomes washed away the memory of Inter with a commanding display. Please, can you do that every week? Credit where it’s due, and an absolutely unreal result for Spurs in their maiden CL campaign.
The shambolic side-shows that Milan got involved in sets up the return leg nicely. The Flamini incident was straight out of the Tony Adams school of defending and the Graham Poll school of bad refereeing. He won’t get away with it the next time. On the other hand, Gattuso was just total entertainment. Was this guy ever a good player, or has he always been just a wind-up merchant? His attempted ‘Glasgow kiss’ on Joe Jordan was as hilarious as it was stupid. To quote Mark Lawrenson: “If he’d have tried that 30 years ago he’d already be eating hospital food”. Some night, savour the memories. Spurs are still on the up.
