Tottenham Hotspur put four goals past Man City at the Etihad without reply to send them surging back up the Premier League table this evening. Let’s take a look at the five things we learned from the match.
Out of the team for weeks, many expected James Maddison to take a seat on the bench once again this evening against Man City, but that was not the case. On his 28th birthday, it was Maddison who handed the Tottenham fans a present with a first-half brace at the Etihad.
More than that, the Tottenham midfielder managed to raise the standards of his off-ball game, showing more physicality than the likes of Man City trio Bernardo Silva, Ilkay Gundogan, and Phil Foden for more than 80 minutes on the pitch. You suspect that the latter will convince Postecoglou to put him back into the starting XI even more than his two goals. Let us not forget that Maddison was not dropped for putting in poor performances, he was rotated out to make room for the pressing of Pape Sarr.
What is it about this man and the Etihad? Well, to be fair to him, Deki has been putting in this level of performance for the vast majority of the season. No goals for the Swede this evening, but he assisted Tottenham’s opener out of nowhere and masterminded the third with a mesmerising run and cross to the back post.
Forget the score, forget the goals, the exciting thing is how consistently world-class Kulusevski is becoming in all areas of the pitch. Tottenham have such a special player on their hands here.
Plenty of players will get credit for the 4-0 victory, but Ben Davies should be up there with the best of them. Most Spurs fans expected Davies and Dragusin to struggle to replicate the performance levels of Van de Ven and Romero, but if anything, they elevated them this evening. Davies in particular was immense at the back, up against the far taller and stronger Erling Haaland.
Not only did he win his aerial duels, ground duels, and block shots/crosses for fun, but his work on the ball was nothing short of world-class. Some of those dragged passes into the pockets for Son and Maddison, as well as the clips into Solanke’s chest, need to be analysed and mimicked by Van de Ven once he is back.
Somehow, despite those defeats to Brighton, Crystal Palace, and Ipswich Town, Tottenham are still just three points off third in the Premier League table – and four points off second! That brings us to our next point though…
I know that any team in the league can look back at results and say ‘what if we’d won that one’ and ‘what if we’d avoided defeat there’, but let’s do it anyway. 2-0 up at half-time against Brighton, then handing both Palace and Ipswich their first wins of the season – those kinds of results are extreme and inexcusable drop-offs.
Even if Spurs had earned a draw from each of them, they would be joint third in the Premier League and one point off second. Win a couple of them and they would genuinely be in the title hunt. Clearly, it is too early for that conversation because Spurs don’t have the consistency in games against low-block teams… but if they do manage to solve that particular problem, they could be dangerous.
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