It was a brilliant reaction from Tottenham on Saturday after the disappointment of only managing a draw at the King Power Stadium last Monday. On that night, it was Tottenham’s lack of a cutting edge in front of goal that Spurs get punished by that Jamie Vardy equaliser. As the old cliche goes, if you don’t take your chances you get punished. However, there was no danger of that on Saturday at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium as Tottenham were clinical and Everton were woeful.
It was Yves Bissouma who got Tottenham up and running as he hit a composed strike off the crossbar and in from outside of the penalty box in the 14th minute. It followed great play between Brennan Johnson, James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski with the latter with some nice footwork inside the box to breeze past three or four Evertonians to find the returning Bissouma in space. It was Son Heung-Min’s pressure on Jordan Pickford that caused our second as Pickford calamitously slipped and enabled Son to score an open goal. A similar occurrence had already happened twice in the match where Sonny nearly caught out Pickford but it was third time lucky for the Tottenham captain. It looked from the stands that Pickford had that mistake in him, and that error in the 25th minute proved it.
There were a few goalmouth scrambles for Everton in the final few moments of the first half but Tottenham absorbed the pressure and went in at half time 2-0 ahead.
Cristian Romero scored from a corner on his 100th appearance for the club, and Micky Van De Ven ran the full length of the pitch before laying it off for Skipper Sonny to make it 4-0.
A goal from outside the box (Bissouma), a goal from a set piece (Romero) and a clean sheet. The most un-Tottenham like win, but the most welcome one at N17.
Wilson Odobert fitted in seamlessly on debut and posed a solid threat whenever he had the ball trying to run at the Everton backline. Heung-Min Son kept pressing and running all game and that was important from the captain to set the tone for everyone else. It was good to see more minutes for Archie Gray and Lucas Bergvall too. It was a good outing for me going to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday afternoon, albeit through battling bad weather and train cancellations.