goodfootballerornot

A great derby game, hell just a great game.  Bentlys blinding goal kicked off a roller coaster of a game which had Spurs unfairly down 4-2 until the 90th minute when Jenas scored a brilliant goal followed by a surprising equaliser.

Lots of talk of the naievity of the Arsenal squad and how age lost them the game, lets analyse that shall we;

Woolwich team

Almunia, Sagna, Silvestre, Gallas, Clichy, Walcott, Fabregas,
Denilson, Nasri, Van Persie, Adebayor

Average Age: 24.6

and here’s the spurs team

Gomes, Hutton, Corluka, Woodgate, Assou-Ekotto, Bentley, Modric,
Jenas, Huddlestone, Bale, Pavulychenko

Average age: 23.8.

So in fact the Spurs “Kids” played a good game and made a stunning late comeback.

Spurs appear to play better with 10 men, unfortunately not so with only 9.

The early penalty was justified, but the card was not understandable at all.  Yes Bale did a rubbish tackle and hacked the guy down, but it wasn’t malicious, just bad play.  A lucky equaliser was perhaps only fair in terms of their subsequent performance and domination but were always going to have problems after the 2nd goal and red card.

Having Hutton back is a bonus for Spurs, he just needs some practice as his crosses are often poor.  Woodgate looks slow and the unfortunate Corluka looks to be a good buy.  Spurs however are deficient in midfield, no enforcer, hell no tackler!  Modric is visionary but tackles like a girl (David Bently).  Huddleston needs to be played with him as he can at least do a defensive play breaking role.  With Lennon on the left not getting the ball or seemingly able to deliver a cross and Bently doing the same on the right Spurs few forwards are struggling to get any sort of service.   For someone who wants to be David Beckham, Bently also appears to have picked up the bad old Beckham habits of not tracking back, run or just plain not putting him self about enough.  Being subbed for an injured Pavlyuchenko (Known as Pav from now on!) is really a reflection of how poor he is.

Defensively Spurs are shaky, have a keeper carrying injuries as they don’t trust their backup keeper and a Captain who’s career is likely to be over sooner rather than later.  They have also sold all their players who compensated for this by scoring lots of goals.

Spurs and Newcastle are currently being used as prime examples of why the sporting director doesn’t work.  This is just so much bollocks and is a poor journalism.  What doesn’t work is a shit sporting director or a sporting director operating from a different city!

Stoke look like a Championship side and one who should have put more past a desperate Spurs team and if Spurs don’t start winning soon they will be in the Championship.

Depressingly its business as usual for the Prem.  All of the “top 4″ won, with scary good score lines for Chelsea and Man U.

Boro were spanked in the second half and although Chelsea were fortunate for a couple of them Boro had no response apart from capitulation, loosing 5-0 at home is not very good is it. Man U also turned in a far superior second half performace than thier opponents, doing West Brom 4-0.  Everton should be rather annoyed at converting a 1-0 lead at half time to a 3-1 loss, but it does fit thier current form.  Liverpools run of playing badly and winning, with some luck in the form of a Wigan red card, continued with a late 3-2 win over Wigan.

The teams with a shout of breaking into the Champions League spots, Villa and Portsmouth, managed a fairly rubbish draw together, hard fought it might have been but a win is required for the top 4.  Villa who have looked at times like a top 4 team, until they got rolled over by Chelsea, will regret thier lack of scoring here I’m sure.   Jermaine Defoe showed why he won’t get a start for England, we have better play makers and more accurate shooters.   By the end of today Hull, of all teams – come on be honest your thinking the same, could be in the top four with a draw against West Ham and frankly they have a very good chance of doing so.

Later today Spurs play Stoke for Ramos job and anything other than a win must spell the end for him.  Loosing will leave Spurs deep in the shit with only 2 points, no confidence and the players wondering who will be managing them in a couple of weeks.