but still 3 points and a clean sheet.
Things were quiet on New Years Day, fans and players must have been feeling the effects of Hogmanay, well the players have a reputation to uphold. But things all worked out well in the end, a second clean sheet on the trot, to go with the third win over the Chrimbo period, which doesn’t happen most years.
A game where Spurs weren’t at their best, far from it really, so were probably lucky to be up against a very limited Fulham side managed by the Welsh Draw King. You know a team are in a bad way for goals when they’re desperate for Bobby “one season wonder” Zamora to get back from injury.
So a scrappy affair ensued Spurs being the better of the pair of course as Modric did his best to run the show yet again. Some glorious stuff from the little Croat who probably quite rightly has been piping Bale to the Spurs player of 2010 in a lot of blog reviews of the year. The nutmeg and run round ex-Spur Murphy and then a sublime outside of the foot cross to Lennon, were the highlights of the game in attack.
The goal apart of course, usual suspects what’s that 11 straight games where van der Vaart has either scored or had an assist and Bale now on 11 goals for the season, 7 in the league – put into perspective Giggs, who many who have you believe is the greatest player of the Premier era, has only got into double figure 4 times in his 21 seasons.
So that was about it for the game the rest was pretty useless, even Modric fell into it in the second half with some really slack passing. But I doubt anything matched the ineptness on the day of Pavlyuchenko’s attempted first touches, they were awful from the start. Downer on the day was Hutton going off, now Corluka had some nice passes for Lennon but he sees far too much of the ball when it’s passed along the back line and it usually ends up with him panicking and playing someone into trouble or just losing the ball and it’s still painful watching him try and run.
It was a game where the defence shone, Dawson and Gallas, latter in for the suspended Kaboul, were on top form all afternoon, culminating on Dawson’s casual of the line clearance. But most attacks were snuffed out with some great “none shall pass” blocks.
So the real talk of the day wasn’t of the game but of ‘Arry’s talking up a loan move for David Beckham. Oh dear god do us a favour Let’s hope his American club put a stop to all this. After all they’re not happy after the first move to Milan was extended into their season and the second ended with his knackered Achilles.
Why would you really want hi at the club, just to sell monikered shirts to fat bints who rate players by looks and fame or to screaming orientals who were Chelski, ManUre or Woolwich scum plastic fans last week. It can’t really be for footballing reasons.
Look at the last week’s games against Newcastle and Villa, winning goals came about by pace. What has Beckham not got? Ah but he can put the dead balls in there. So can Bale and van der Vaart, it’s not something we are lacking for. But remember against Greece? Remember what all the free-kicks he screwed up before that one actually went in?
Ah but he’ll teach Lennon how to cross. How will he Beckham’s crossing has mainly been based on the ball being stationary, Lennon’s based on him moving at pace, it’s one reason his crosses don’t come off as well. Easier to stop the ball and then kick it and that’s the other factor in Italy you have the time for that sort of thing in the Premier League the game would fly by him. And just look at the last World Cup he played in all those great crosses that flew over Peter Crouch’s head, that bodes well.
Oh but he’ll bring the leadership in the dressing room. That’s if he doesn’t upset what looks like a pretty happy squad, look at them when they score and win, one big happy family.
But just think if he comes off the bench in the last 10 minutes to see out games. I can just see him when our backs are against the wall, poncing out of a challenge to protect himself as he did in Japan in 2002 against Brazil that lead to their equaliser. After all he is more important than the team.
Beckham the player is dead, Beckham the brand isn’t really needed, win something and get into the Champions League again and live off our own backs not that of some show pony.
