West Ham 1-1 Spurs: Three Tottenham Talking Points

AANP’s latest book ‘All Action No Plot: Postecoglou’s First Season’, is out now for just £7.99 from Amazon (ebook from £6.99) – while Spurs’ Cult Heroes is also still available

1. A 90-Minute Shrug of Indifference

A rummy one, what? Our hosts greeted their own Cup Final with a collective shrug of indifference, reflected with pleasing symmetry by both those in the stands and on the pitch.

As for our own heroes, all pretence from Our Glorious Leader that he is selecting the best players for each game, or any such gubbins deemed fit for public consumption, was finally dispensed with. This was unashamedly our reserve crew. The B-team, as it were. Ange essentially rasped as much himself. The purpose of this particular exercise was simply to avoid The Chosen XI picking up any more injuries.

A bit galling, I imagine, for some of the more experienced bods – Danso, Davies et al – to be looked squarely in the eye and told they’re the second string, but such is life, and I expect the astronomical wads of cash stuffed into the monthly envelope help to cushion the blow.

Anyway, with literally nobody on the premises giving the slightest damn about the occasion, I imagine that even the hardiest of lilywhites would have treated this one with a degree of indifference, all eggs now having been so unashamedly shoved into the Europa basket. Where previously every dreary League performance was greeted with bile-filled rage and a volley of rotten fruit from the stalls, yesterday’s was treated with all the dozy engagement of a post-lunch, cocktail-fuelled siesta on a sun-kissed beach.

2. Vicario

Unimportant stroll in the sun it might have been, but old habits die hard in Team Lilywhite, and there was therefore still time for our heroes to throw in the concession of a comfortably avoidable goal.

By my count at least three of our number will need to be dragged into the office, given the intimidating eye and asked in no uncertain terms to explain themselves. Young Master Spence, whose usual exterior cloak of languid unconcern actually fitted the occasion perfectly, was guilty of weighing up the need for positional discipline and then promptly deciding that this wasn’t the occasion for such professionalism.

Instead, he dreamily wandered out towards Wan-Bissaka, and, neither doing one thing nor another when it came to the age-old choice of Clobber-Your-Man or Sit-Back-To-Monitor-The-Overlapping-Forward, seemed a little taken aback to find that W-B had slipped the ball forward for the unopposed Bowen.

Spence having thus been removed from the equation, the onus fell upon Ben Davies to take some drastic disruptive steps. Davies had already given fair notice of the fact that, upstanding sort of chap though he undoubtedly is, the basics of association football are starting to creep a little beyond him. The early yellow card he collected, for uprooting an opponent as if he were a one hundred year-old oak, stank of a chap whose finest years are behind him.

And when W-B played the logical ball forward to Bowen, I was rather aghast to find that Davies was busily setting into motion an ill-advised offside trap. One did not really need 10 years as a Premier League defender to spot that this was a gambit laced with risk, and a tad inappropriate for the circumstances.

The Bowen was a good yard or two onside for a start, something Davies ought to have spotted given his involvement at the heart of the operation. Moreover, stopping in his tracks to try to play the offside game meant that he was rocking on his heels somewhat, while the Bowen was building up a head of steam towards our goal.

The net result was that when Davies eventually set off to take the drastic disruptive steps previously identified, he was a long way behind schedule. In fact, the thought of intervening seemed not even to strike him, until the Bowen was already sizing up his shot. Scuttling across with the air of a man who knows he’s late for an appointment, Ben Davies, like Spence before him, found himself in the awkward position of needing to tap on the shoulder his nearest colleague, for a spot of help with a brewing situation of concern.

That nearest colleague was Vicario. I confess to having greeted the news of his captaincy for the day with a sense of startled alarm. One’s cohort is, after all, made in the image of its leader. The thought of Vicario’s crazy rantings acting as the standard for all in the company fills me with a certain discomfort.

On this occasion, however, his demented ravings were not of concern. The only item on the agenda, really, was the stopping in his tracks of that Bowen. And with the angle tight, and Vicario manning the rear, the Bowen’s prospects seemed contained. He had the option, of course, of unlocking a whole new level of danger by squaring the ball; but of his own personal ambitions, one might have asserted with some confidence that the prospects were limited. All Vicario needed to do was not allow the ball to pass literally through his frame.

Here, however, he blundered severely. The only conceivable shooting option would have been through the legs of Vicario, and one could devote hours of study to the question of how Vicario himself failed to realise this; but fail to realise it was exactly what he did. Rather than arranging the lower limbs in some preventative structure, he hit upon the idea of spreading them widely enough to drive a bus through them.

Peter Schmeichel, I always felt, had the right idea in these situations, he being a fan of the cricket-style ‘long barrier’ technique, of bending one leg to the ground, in order to prevent entry. Vicario, alas, was evidently not an alumnus of this particular school, and it was the work of a moment for the Bowen to poke the ball through his legs.

This having struck me as a glaring faux pas, it was a deeply unimpressed AANP who drank in the remainder; but in his defence, Vicario then earned himself enormous credit in the second half with a pretty spectacular save to maintain parity.

It stemmed from the right clog of Ward-Prowse, from a free-kick, rather inevitably. I’ve often felt that if one were to remove free-kicks one would remove the very essence of Ward-Proswe, and he would gently shimmer out of existence.

Free-kicks are very much still knocking around, however, and when he bent one goalwards from the left, and some bright-eyed chum strained the neck muscles at it, the entire sequence – and particularly the geography of that neck muscle-flick, occurring as it did from inside the 6-yard box – meant that Vicario had precious little time to rearrange the moorings and take appropriate action.

That he did so was immensely to his credit. Even more to his credit was the fact that he was gently ambling to his right as the adventure began, and when neck muscle-f. took effect he found himself needing to transfer all body weight to his left and begin from scratch, as it were.

This he did, however, having the good sense to wave a sturdy arm at the ball as he did so, and the fruit of these labours was that he was able to give the ball a hearty slap in the direction of safety. As such, when the curtain came down and the numbers were counted, Vicario came away with one in the debit column, but a heck of a one in the credit column also.

3. Bissouma, and Various Other Appreciative Nods

This being a sleepy, meandering sort of affair, one does not really need to concern oneself with such niceties as the Outstanding Player of the Match Gong, but nevertheless, I thought I’d throw in my tuppence worth for Yves Bissouma. ‘Outstanding’ is admittedly stretching things somewhat, but after the bravura display on Thursday night, I was intrigued to see whether his high standard would be maintained.

And while he did not exactly hit those Thursday night heights, it struck me that he did well enough. Actually, more striking to me was that he seemed to have a defined role, and carried it out. This could be contrasted to young Sarr, who was definitely in attendance, but seemed to hover about hither and thither with the air of a fellow not entirely sure where he’s supposed to be.

Bissouma, by contrast, seemed fully cognizant of the fact that his role was that of Defensive Midfielder, and he seemed similarly clued up on what this entailed too. And as such his afternoon featured various tackles and interceptions and diligent runs back towards his own goal with a view to putting out fires and generally lending a helping hand. If you were to conclude ‘Solid enough’ with an accompanying shrug, I would suggest that you and I were of one mind.

A gently complimentary nod too towards Herr Danso, who, as far as I can tell, did not put too many feet wrong defensively. One or two of his passes perhaps lacked the requisite layer of polish, but he generally comes across as a Romero minus the hot-headedness, and that AANP can get on board with.

Young Spence generally kept to himself throughout, but in the second half was eventually persuaded to explorer the upper environs of the pitch, and did so to wholesome effect.

I was also rather taken by the extended Mikey Moore cameo. Every time he touched the ball he seemed to induce a spot of panic in the other lot, drawing a foul here and an ill-advised lunge there. Our Glorious Leader would no doubt insist that he is protecting the young imp’s development by rationing his minutes quite so frugally, but I personally was thrilled to see him unwrapped again.

If there were a concern at AANP Towers it was that Kulusevski continues to look decidedly undercooked. In the first half of the season some of those barrelling runs of his appeared unstoppable. Now, he seems more of a headless chicken, channelling his inner Lucas Moura to go wandering off down all sorts of odd cul-de-sacs, with no obvious end-goal in mind, and no particular advantages gained. With Maddison seemingly unlikely to be available for Thursday, there will be onus on Kulusevski to contribute rather more meaningfully to the operation.