It’s been a good few matches for Tottenham! In the last article we discussed the Coventry and Brentford games, and in this one we will look at the Qarabag, Manchester United and Ferencvaros games.
Starting off with Qarabag, which was a potential banana skin fixture on paper with it being our first Europa game, it worsened on paper after Radu Dragusin calamitously let the ball roll across him and pulled back his man to deny one on one chance for Qarabag. This led to him seeing red and Tottenham being down to 10 inside 8 minutes. Lucas Bergvall was the unlucky player to be replaced for Destiny Udogie as Ange Postecoglou looked to reinstate a back 4 with Ben Davies, who started at left back, being shifted to centre back alongside Micky Van De Ven, with Destiny Udogie and Archie Gray completing the backline. Tottenham were very open with this back 4 due to the man disadvantage but scored quickly as Dominic Solanke used his strength to poke a ball through to Brennan Johnson to score. Pape Sarr doubled the lead with an instinctive finish before Dominic Solanke secured it after the ball was parried out to him after Heung-Min Son’s shot. Performance wise, we played well and created chances with the 10 men but should have conceded on multiple occasions, Vicario, the crossbar and the post all came in clutch including for Qarabag’s penalty miss.
This made it 3 wins in a row before the game at Old Trafford against Manchester United, a ground we notoriously struggle at. It was a rapid fire start as Micky Van De Ven sprinted through the United team and played a delightful cross for Brennan Johnson. Bruno Fernandes got sent off for a reckless swipe at James Maddison, which despite not making much contact was a dangerous tackle. It somehow got rescinded after the game. For me, red cards should not be related to the actual injury sustained. Dejan Kulusevski scored instinctively making light contact on a deflected Brennan Johnson cross to lob it over Onana. Dominic Solanke showed his poacher instincts again as he made it 3-0 after Lucas Bergvall’s corner was flicked on by Pape Sarr. 3-0 did not reflect the utter domination Spurs had though, as if it was not for Onana (and Timo Werner) it could have been 6 or 7. Werner, despite his solid performance defensively and in build up, proved why we cannot rely on him in front of goal missing 2 guilt edged opportunities, and you can’t help but think that Sonny would have scored both chances.
Ferencvaros in Hungary was our first European away day of the season, and Ange Postecoglou handed first senior starts to youngsters Will Lankshear and Mikey Moore. Lankshear had a few positive moments, touches and passes, and showed good hold up play and had a couple of moments in front of goal where he could have done slightly more, albeit one of them was a quality tackle from a Ferencvaros player. Moore impressed on the whole, always looking to take on his man and get into good positions and pose a threat. It was Pape Sarr who opened the scoring minutes after Ferencvaros thought they’d taken the lead but VAR adjourned the goalscorer to be fractionally offside. The goal itself was equally fortunate as the defender didn’t know where the ball was and it fell kindly for Sarr to side foot home, making it 2 goals in 2 European games for the Senegalese midfielder. Brennan Johnson came off the bench to double the lead, meaning he has a goal in each of the last 5 games now – impressive form. Ferencvaros did pull one back late on, but it wasn’t enough to deny Spurs from making it 5 wins in a row in all competitions with Brighton in the Premier League up next.