Article by Lee MasonFollow e-Spurs on Twitter
When you buy a Guinness in a London pub for 5 pounds sterling you expect that the pint will be fulsome and have a lovely thick texture like a bitter treacle. But then said pint arrives and you see no frothy head, the pint is flat and more watery than a fish gill, you can feel angry very quickly. Expectation is a problem. Maybe we should destroy it. While the Government are having war with abstract concepts (Terror for example) they may as well send in the air strikes on expectation. Arsenal fans expected to demolish our beloved Tottenham on Saturday. But they didn't. The Arsenal reaction from the game was one which highlighted their expectations, in that they were very frustrated, shocked and went through a list of reasons why what happened, happened. Most Spurs fans I spoke to were relaxed prior to the game. Well as relaxed as you can be before the biggest London Derby. There was an expectation from us that we could hope for a draw, but probably lose. With that expectation emphasised by the media who could see no other result other than a loss for Tottenham. The odds were ridiculously in favour of Arsenal. All these factors contributed towards this sense of 'oh well'. Obviously there were still Spurs fans who were not so relaxed, or not so pessimistic.
So in the 56th minute when we had rode the waves of Arsenal 'attacks' and Chadli managed to redeem himself following his earlier miss with a goal, my expectation increased. Excellent. I was totally fine with nil nil, expecting that they would score and puncture my one point dreams. But as soon as we scored the fear set in. That same fear seemed to have hit our team, we then couldn't string a pass together. I think tactically we went out to be tight and ready to hit on the counter. The plan failed a little, when, from around 60th minute mark, we fell deeper and deeper trying to protect the one nil. There were still some players wanting to get another, we missed a couple of good opportunities to get a second which was a shame. The reports said that we had been pegged back in our own half for those minutes, but I felt it was more our plan being compounded by Arsenals desperation and our lack of confidence on the ball. This was exacerbated when Welbeck struck the air like he was attempting to make chunks of the biosphere crack upon his boot. This awful miss was the catalyst for Arsenals goal. Without that one miss by Welbeck Arsenal may not have scored. It's like Marty Mcfly getting hit by his Grandad in Back to the Future which legitimises his existence; except without the budget, the time travel morality subtext or the insane professor who has an obsession with time. Oh, actually the latter is the same...Cue Wenger.
Wenger stated, after the match, without irony, that we 'took every second' we could 'to make the game last as little as possible'. However Wenger fails to notice that if we subtracted our alleged time wasting from the 98 minutes of play it would leave Arsenal with 96 minutes to play with. He obviously discounts the 3 minutes added to the first half for Arsenal players lying down for a rest (Wilshere). Or the five minutes added to the end of the game for another Arsenal injury. Wenger also conveniently forgets how Arsenal do that regularly to other teams, for a team with so much talent they spend a lot of time diving, lying on the floor and complaining to the ref. Quelle Suprise. I wrote Quelle Surprise just in case Wenger was reading. Which he obviously isn't, since he is probably too busy berating his kettle for wasting time boiling in the traditional manner rather than just instantly hitting 100 centigrade.
Overall it was a good performance from most, Eriksen being the notable exception, though he still played a key part in keeping the ball. The tactic of trying to stretch them with Lennon towards the end was a good idea but with too many players willing to hump the ball out rather than pass it carefully and keep Arsenal from pressurising us. Of the two teams chances I have to say I felt we had much better chances. Adebayor when slipped in by Lamela's toe poke was a prime chance, with Adebayor deciding to go to the byline before realising he was meant to have shot immediately. The Chadli miss. And the many times we broke and someone decided to lay the ball off to the least available player or to no one at all but just sort of stumble with the ball.
It was great to see a little fight in the team, Kaboul was almost his old self for the majority of the game, Naughton looked good on the right. Vertonghen was back in the team and it was nice to see him, to see him, nice. Lamela did well to set up Chadli and looked good with his passing and general fight. Chadli scoring another goal was excellent to see with 4 goals in 5 games now. It was an unfair booking, a booking which essentially saw someone put his hand to his ear. I felt that more offensive gesture was Wilshere. Not for anything he did per se. Just for being Wilshere.
We've come a long way since West Brom, I certainly don't want to go back to that absence of style again. I'm hoping in the future we can have the same fighting spirit as yesterday and combine that with a bit of flair. I say bit, I mean largess.
Roads? Where we're going...We don't need, roads.
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Given the fact that we are still 'a work in progress', I too, thought we would do well to draw at the Emirates. I would have been a little happier than I am now had it been them who were one up, and us getting the late equaliser. Now, since we were ahead, I see it as chucking 2 points away. There's plenty of individual talent, but as a team we haven't yet developed enough self-belief, especially when playing the top 6. Good article
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