Happy Christmas everyone! After their 6-2 demolition of Everton at Goodison Park, Spurs return to Wembley to face Eddie Howe's Cherries. Bournemouth are known for their expansive, free flowing football, but in the corresponding fixture last season, Howe surprised everyone by setting his team up very defensively and we needed a Christian Eriksen strike early in the 2nd half to prevail 1-0. However they set up, Bournemouth have a lot of quality in their side with young David Brookes taking the PL by storm. Fraser, Callum Wilson and Joshua King pose a threat up front, but they can be flaky at the back and Begovic always has the odd rickett in goal, so hopefully we can continue our momentum with a positive result and keep the pressure on the top two. COYS!
11 for, 2 against the last 2 matches. Home and away Against mid-table teams, not bottom dwellers. Very impressive. And that goal difference is now quite respectable (relative to Spurs of the past few seasons).
kane's goal was quite good, btw. chip by eriksen over kanes shoulder, kane hits it on the volley. not an easy thing at all
Thumping, there. Nice to see us hitting on all cylinders. Wish I could have watched it. But, it was behind the NBC Gold paywall that I refuse to pay for. I don't think City are done for. But, they do look confused. I think at times their deep pool of talent puts them in the position of playing so many combinations that chemistry can suffer. We need a couple more high quality midfielders and/or defenders so that we don't get into exhaustion late in the season. But, much more depth and maintaining chemistry becomes a real problem, IMO. Liverpool is also looking really good, but do they have more or less depth than us? Are they likely to swoon late due to exhaustion? How Liverpool and Spurs handle augmenting talent in January may be the deciding strategic factor.
One thing to keep in mind is the Pep won league with Bayern, but not CL (not going to compare Barca due to relative depth of La Liga). So it seems that Pep can get his team together, even though bad losses. Same goes for last season in the EPL. Klopp, I would argue, is much the same in ability. And it is a good comparison in the both he and Pep were in the Bundesliga, and Pep came out on top both times. The difference, though, is that in the EPL, there are 6 teams with the talent to challenge for the title, though both Chelsea and Arsenal would probably fall a bit short talenwise, and Man U have suffered due to Jose. The big thing here is that Klopp has never won the CL and Pep has won the CL since 2011 (with Barca). What I can see happening is that one of them puts a slightly greater focus on the CL which knocks the other down the ranks of the EPL and that gives Spurs a shot at the title in a 1v1 situation, rather than a 1v1v1 situation.
Looking good, hope we continue to get stronger into the 2nd half... Where any race for the title will still go through and require getting results against the other top 5 teams. In March we have Arse at home, away to Dortmund for 2nd leg and away to Liverpool at the end of the month. Of our last 6 games 4 will be at home... 4th from last will be a trip to City. COYS!
Poch made 4 changes to the side that destroyed Everton on Sunday and it showed as some of our passing and defending was a bit sluggish. But we punished Bournemouth with our ruthlessness in front of goal and were able to conserve energy for what will be a much tougher test Saturday against Wolves. Nuno Espirito Santo's team will not be as open and naive as Everton and Bournemouth were. Our front 4 were superb, with Kane and Eriksen running the game with able support from Son and Lucas. Walker-Peters continues to impress at RB.