They pull me back in
You’re all just thinking about what Romero will do to Matty Cash, aren’t you?
SPURS 3-1 PALACE
Timo Werner (77') Cristian Romero (80') Son Heung-Min (88')
Eberechi Eze (59')
I am just barely getting in this post before Sunday’s showdown with Aston Villa. Life continues to intrude in many ways, and I also needed time to process last weekend’s match.
Once again, this match can be filed under the cliché “A Tale of Two Halves.” (We at Upstate Spurs don’t resort to cliché for post titles, except when they are clever and punny.) We had most of the ball—no, we had almost ALL of the ball—in the first half, but in a familiar refrain, we struggled against the low block.
We did have a golden chance when Rodrigo Bentancur dispossessed Eberechi Eze and Son Heung-min executed a 3-D chess pass that sent Timo Werner 1 v 1 against Palace keeper Sam Johnstone. So far, Timo has been as advertised—a pacey, energetic winger in the mold of Aaron Lennon who gets himself in good positions, yet who lacks composure in front of goal (and that may be unfair to Azza). Timo hasn’t exactly exuded confidence on his chances, and it was no surprise that Johnstone emerged the winner on this one.
Things went to the break nil-nil, and I began to wonder if we’d ever regain our form from the beginning of the season, when Yves Bissouma would navigate the way forward and a cocky James Maddison won PL Player of the Month honors. Both showed signs of life last week, as did Bentancur in the no. 8 role in place of Pape Matar Sarr, but the three are still not who they can be.
With our midfield engine still not firing on all cylinders, we fell in love with safe, sideways passes again. Lacking any wingers of the dribbly persuasion, we allow opposing teams to feel safe in building a house in front of their goal. All too often, our attempts at creativity consist of passing to a player at the top of the box who receives ball to feet, back to goal and flanked by two or three defenders, in the hopes that his next touch, usually a low-percentage one, will somehow find its way via random chance or chaos to someone with a scoring chance. More often than not, it seems these chances result in a counterattack.
As has often happened, though, Ange’s halftime hair-drier turned things around. This may not sound like the deepest of fanalysis, but our boys turned things around by being more aggressive and showing a greater sense of urgency in possession. Maddison, in particular, seemed to have a new lease on live.
Most will agree we should’ve been awarded a penalty when Timo was taken down in the box in the 52nd minute, but because he plays for Spurs now, the penalty was not given on the pitch and VAR dare not correct the sin of omission. In the 54th, Deki Kulusevski found Sonny atop the Palace box, and our captain took it nicely but his one-touch effort ricocheted off the post.
Against the run of play, Eze earned a free kick just outside our box. It’d seemed that Bentancur’s tactical foul was the smart play to prevent Eze from cutting in, but Palace’s no. 10 curled his dead-ball chance well out of Guglielmo Vicario’s reach. Vicario has had a brilliant season, for which he just picked up Goalkeeper of the Year honors at the London Football Awards. In recent weeks, however, we’re starting to see the areas of his game he needs to improve. He’s struggled on corners, and on Eze’s goal, he could’ve done better in setting up his wall.
But second-half Spurs were in full effect. Son, who had his best match in quite some time, fed Timo’s diagonal run into the box, but Timo scuffed it into Johnstone’s hands. Three minutes later, Sonny received Timo’s pass from the goal line and fed Brennan Johnson. It was the Welsh winger’ first touch since coming on, and he opened up a bit too much a scooped it over goal. At the 74’ mark, Son sent a pass across the mouth of the goal, but Johnson couldn’t quite get there to tap it in.
The 22-year-old Welsh international has been criticized (too) harshly by some of our fellow supporters, but he certainly shut them up in the 77th minute when he beat Joachim Anderson, then Jefferson Lerma, then squared it past four Palace men to set up Timo with sitter so good that Werner could only deposit it into a wide-open goal for the equalizer and his first for the club. It was the play of the match and earns Johnson SPUR OF THE MOMENT honors.
As has often happened under Ange, once we broke the seal, the juices flowed freely. We took the lead three minutes later when Emerson Royal—who played a heady match and cleaned up a rare mistake by Romero in the first half—took a thrown-in and found a wide-open Madders. Our dart-throwing attacker used the outside of his foot to lob a curling pass from the outside of his foot, which a forward-thinking Cristian Romero headed nicely past Johnstone. Our vice-captain kissed his badge as he ran toward the stands to celebrate.
Let us now pause to praise our center half partnership of Romero and Mickey van de Ven. The former scored the go-ahead goal, and the latter initiated the sequence that iced the game. vdV, recently timed to be the fastest player in Premier League history, stepped up the stop a Palace attack, strode forward, and found Destiny Udogie at midfield. Johnson collected a loose ball and set Son away on a 1 v 1. With apologies to Timo, who played a good game—and showed why we should exercise our very affordable option to sign him permanently this summer—seeing Son on a breakaway is an entirely different experience. As soon as he got a step on his man, you knew our xG-exceeding captain would score, and score he did.
One of the reasons for the delay in posting this was the dilemma I had in selecting the USMOTM. Johnson tallied two assists in his appearance off the bench. I wavered between Cuti and Mickey and considered letting them share honors. Romero is simply brilliant, a defender who steps up in key moments and provides line-breaking service to the midfield; and Mickey cuts off whatever Romero can’t intercept.
In the end, though, Son Heung-min scored, set up three other chances, and his step-back drew Palace defenders toward him as if ensnared in an invisible web on the pass that set up Werner’s goal. The honors go to our captain for him to share with the strong contingent of Korean fans who show up to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to support him and the club.
It was a well-deserved win and one that kept us on the heels of Aston Villa, who we play tomorrow. Here at Upstate Spurs, we offer in-depth fanalysis of the finer points of the game, so here’s our pre-match talking point:
Matty Cash is a goon.
We all remember Romero seethingly staring at Cash after his dirty challenge on Bentancur, which knocked the Uruguayan out of the home fixture in November, which we lost 1-2. The Villa defender also got away with a swat to Bryan Gil’s head that day. Cash seems to be making a career out of unpunished acts that would’ve earned Romero several shades of red. Justice would have Romero booting Cash clear into the streets of Birmingham tomorrow…but the best revenge would come in the form of three points, followed by some choice words from Gio Lo Celso uttered toward the Villa villain during the post-match handshakes.
UP THE SPURS!
—Upstate Spurs