Tottenham had a tough November with 1 point from 15. It all started against Chelsea when the spine of the team got injured or were suspended for the month of November. With 10 injuries and a couple of suspensions Tottenham had only 15 players to choose from so it was always going to be tough going especially when we had to come up against the likes of Aston Villa , Wolves , Man City and West Ham. The Newcastle game on Sunday was the last of our hard fixtures until maybe Brighton at the end of the month. Also with only 2 league matches in January hopefully it won't be long until Spur have more players such as Maddison and Van Der Ven back from injury.
The funny thing is that Spurs have been playing great football in November. We went in front in all these matches but for some reason we ended up losing. Let us go through them after the Chelsea game.
Spurs vs Wolves. : Los Celso not fit yet so it was the only game where we played bad. It was like the old Tottenham where Dier and Hojbjerg were slowing down play and hoofing the ball up the pitch. That said we were 1 nil up until the 92nd minute. Then a Wolves player scored the goal of the season and a second went in at the 96th minute. The tiredness at Chelsea playing with 9 men took its toll.
Spurs vs Aston Villa: Ange did no like what he saw at Wolves and changed the team by taking Dier and Hojbjerg out of the team. He played full backs at Centre half and Spurs were all over Villa playing great football. The first half Tottenham should have been up by 3 or 4. They just did not have a clinical finisher and maybe it was the first time since Kane left where we really missed him. Villa got in the second half and again scored twice but the feeling after the game was positive as the team were going in the right direction and playing great football. They just did not finish their chances.
Spurs vs City With half a team and no Centre halves we put 3 past Man City. When a team brings Doku off and replaces him with £100 million Grealish you can see their squad depth. Spurs were bringng on youth team players at the end. Great result. Ange had a go at his players at halftime for being afraid to play his system so Spurs came out better in second half and got the equalizer. Spurs had 40 chances at Villa and 1 went in. We had 3 chances against city and all 3 went in. That's football.
Spurs vs West Ham First 15 minutes Spurs had 95% of possesion and were playing West Ham off the pitch. Again went 1 nil up but West Ham stood solid and playing against a low block team looks to cause Spurs problems. West Ham came out in the second half and scored two jammy goals. Night to forget but again played well.
Spurs vs Newcastle: Ange not happy with his team at West Ham drops Lo Celso for Sarr and the team go gun hoe again but this time they were clinical and were too much for Newcastle. When Sonny plays well Spurs play well and the captain really put in a shift against City and Newcastle. Fairly anonymous in the other games. Newcastle look tired from their first time in Europe in a long time. Spurs capitalised on this and went 4 nil up. A late consolation put a slight dampener on things but the game was won. Spurs go to Notts Forest on Friday for their next game with Everton after this.
So you can see from the above there is alot to get through and with half our team injured it is not the easiest for Ange to pick let alone the right team but any team. Maddison is a big miss and so is VDV in the Centre. Romero as we saw last night is a liability as he nearly got a red card once again which automatically gives him a 4 game ban, His 3 game ban in November really affected the team and contributed to the reason we lost 3 times that month. When he is on the pitch he is pulling the strings so without him we are toast. I thought he would have understood this and went a bit easier against Newcastle but he very nearly got sent off again. You just can't take the aggression out of him. That is his game. Dele Ali is an example of a player that lost his fight and he can't get into a bad Everton team at the moment for that very reason.
So Spurs are over the hump of difficult games. They are 5th in the table 7 points off the top spot. If I was asked if I would take this position at the start of the season after losing our best player I would say yes. But if we didn't have that perfect storm against Chelsea things would have been a whole lot different. The games we have lost we always looked winning those games but the luck at the start of the season against the likes of Sheffield United and Liverpool came back around against the likes of Wolves and West Ham so we are where we are. Overall though I am excited as Ange is playing the best football in the Premier League, even better than De Zerbi's Brighton team and Pepe's City who are not their usual selves. When I look at the mess @deniskj 's Man United are in and I see some of the football Arsenal are playing narrowly scraping victories. I am thankful that Big Ange is our manager and hopefully for a long time to come.