Stoke City 1 Tottenham Hotspur 2
There is so much to talk about, but where to begin? (How about the beginning, I hear you shout), good point.
We beat Stoke City to get equal points with Liverpool; just goal difference separates us both. But that isn’t the biggest story over the weekend, no disrespect to Spurs. The big story was United beating City on their own ground, a few days after they were humiliated by Liverpool (3-0) in the Champions League. How does this affect us? Well, before the match we were just a point behind them, but because they defeated the potential League Champions, they created a four-point gap over us (bastards! Can’t they get anything right! Not even to win a league trophy properly, you wouldn’t get that at Spurs, I hear you shout… and when the time comes, we’ll show them, just not this year... but our new ground awaits and that is the place to show the world... until then… yes, until then we have this weekend to talk about and everything else in the mix).
So, a mixed feelings weekend. And there are still two more matches to go; Chelsea v West Ham and Arsenal v Southampton. I’ve just heard that Arsenal has beaten Southampton 3-2 (boo!). No matter how many times you bury Arsenal, they end up finding a shovel buried with them and start digging from beneath the soil upwards. I suppose the answer to that is more soil. But we’ll leave that for another reality (a Twilight zone moment is coming... I feel).
Back to Stoke City and Spurs. We went, we saw, and we conquered, giving us 67 points, the same amount of points as Liverpool, but a game in hand. To be more precise, and as I said above, four points behind United. So that said, to the Stoke game (we keep going to the Stoke game, doing a swerve ball and back to the Stoke game... Deja vu all over again!).
To be fair to them – Stoke City – they did try to close us down. We went a goal up with an Eriksen shot, but a big cock up by Lloris gave them one back. Goal by Diouf. All this in the second half, the first was more of a knock, knock game.
We had our heads in our hands, and just like a lousy goalkeeper, nearly dropped it a few times (no, I am not mentioning Lloris here). Eleven minutes later Eriksen (and some may say Kane) got another goal to put us in the lead, and there it stayed until the referee blew the whistle nearly 8 minutes after the 90 minutes were up. Conspiracy, time added on or something else… you fill it out as you see fit, but none of that made any difference to us as we still won.
I did say that such games aren’t going to be easy, and this game showed that. Now we face a very hungry City who hope to finally win the title at our cost. No, I hear you shout… more to the point, I hear our players cry “NO!” as we need to show them, after our defeat (at the City ground) that we won’t be pushed around for their own glory’s sake.
There are only six games left, which is a possible 18 points. Which is a possible 85 points in total, and one point more than City currently has, that is providing that they lose all their games between now and the end (possible? Or or just an unrealistic dream?). Anyway, let us put that to one side and concentrate on what is possible, and that is finishing second. Of course United beating City doesn’t help our cause, but as they say, nothing is impossible other than Penguins, sheep and the Welsh (work it out yourself!). However, what we do now have control over is us finishing third. We have the same points as Liverpool with a game in hand, so we could easily finish third. But a fourth spot should be a fail safe position. I hope I made that clear? But, City next and that is this Saturday. I fancy our chances, and I predict (two predictions here) either 2-1 or 3-1. What do you say? (Please, don’t be rude, I’ve just had an operation to reverse my testicles to the other side… please don’t laugh, I did until I cried… but that is another story). So, there you have it (as somebody once said… it wasn’t that other bloke, was it?).
So, that is my Sunday blog and apologise for not doing a warm-up review on Friday, but I was travelling around the world, didn’t get home and only to the ground very late. In fact, I got to the ground, in a tizwas, the security stopped me and said, “you can’t go in here”. Why? I cried, “because we don’t know who you are.” But I don’t know who you are, I retaliated. “And?” This whole thing was getting stupid, and then I saw one of the old Spurs players, who also happened to be a friend, he said “hello,” I said hello back and walked with him into the stadium. Nothing more was said, other than I ended up having a chat with the mentioned player, and missing a few minutes of the warm-up buzz in the process. I’ve been so many times to that stadium that you would have thought that the security guards knew me, but alas, if you are looking down at your shoes you are not going to see any prettiness.
I got a quick nod from Poch and we all settled down to a rare 3 pm kick off.
Anyway, a prognosis (or if you prefer a diagnosis or even a conclusion... I am not fussy... they are all words after all
), they all work for me (God, doesn’t he waffle… as the little fellow says in my head). Overall we deserved it and probably could have scored more. We had 67% of the possession. I thought all players played well, but a special mention to Eriksen who, again, played magnificently. Shots on target (4) were spread evenly, but our pedigree showed over their hardworking slog.
We both needed the points urgently, for different reasons. But from this position, I think Stoke City will go down, along with WBA and probably Southampton or Huddersfield, but neither are certain.
As I said previously, we could take an extra 18 points if we beat City (h), Brighton (a), Watford (h), WBA (a), Newcastle (h) and then finally Leicester at our last “home” game before moving to our new home, back at White Hart Lane.
So, that is that until we next meet again.
Yours, Don Scully.
There is so much to talk about, but where to begin? (How about the beginning, I hear you shout), good point.
We beat Stoke City to get equal points with Liverpool; just goal difference separates us both. But that isn’t the biggest story over the weekend, no disrespect to Spurs. The big story was United beating City on their own ground, a few days after they were humiliated by Liverpool (3-0) in the Champions League. How does this affect us? Well, before the match we were just a point behind them, but because they defeated the potential League Champions, they created a four-point gap over us (bastards! Can’t they get anything right! Not even to win a league trophy properly, you wouldn’t get that at Spurs, I hear you shout… and when the time comes, we’ll show them, just not this year... but our new ground awaits and that is the place to show the world... until then… yes, until then we have this weekend to talk about and everything else in the mix).
So, a mixed feelings weekend. And there are still two more matches to go; Chelsea v West Ham and Arsenal v Southampton. I’ve just heard that Arsenal has beaten Southampton 3-2 (boo!). No matter how many times you bury Arsenal, they end up finding a shovel buried with them and start digging from beneath the soil upwards. I suppose the answer to that is more soil. But we’ll leave that for another reality (a Twilight zone moment is coming... I feel).
Back to Stoke City and Spurs. We went, we saw, and we conquered, giving us 67 points, the same amount of points as Liverpool, but a game in hand. To be more precise, and as I said above, four points behind United. So that said, to the Stoke game (we keep going to the Stoke game, doing a swerve ball and back to the Stoke game... Deja vu all over again!).
To be fair to them – Stoke City – they did try to close us down. We went a goal up with an Eriksen shot, but a big cock up by Lloris gave them one back. Goal by Diouf. All this in the second half, the first was more of a knock, knock game.We had our heads in our hands, and just like a lousy goalkeeper, nearly dropped it a few times (no, I am not mentioning Lloris here). Eleven minutes later Eriksen (and some may say Kane) got another goal to put us in the lead, and there it stayed until the referee blew the whistle nearly 8 minutes after the 90 minutes were up. Conspiracy, time added on or something else… you fill it out as you see fit, but none of that made any difference to us as we still won.
I did say that such games aren’t going to be easy, and this game showed that. Now we face a very hungry City who hope to finally win the title at our cost. No, I hear you shout… more to the point, I hear our players cry “NO!” as we need to show them, after our defeat (at the City ground) that we won’t be pushed around for their own glory’s sake.
There are only six games left, which is a possible 18 points. Which is a possible 85 points in total, and one point more than City currently has, that is providing that they lose all their games between now and the end (possible? Or or just an unrealistic dream?). Anyway, let us put that to one side and concentrate on what is possible, and that is finishing second. Of course United beating City doesn’t help our cause, but as they say, nothing is impossible other than Penguins, sheep and the Welsh (work it out yourself!). However, what we do now have control over is us finishing third. We have the same points as Liverpool with a game in hand, so we could easily finish third. But a fourth spot should be a fail safe position. I hope I made that clear? But, City next and that is this Saturday. I fancy our chances, and I predict (two predictions here) either 2-1 or 3-1. What do you say? (Please, don’t be rude, I’ve just had an operation to reverse my testicles to the other side… please don’t laugh, I did until I cried… but that is another story). So, there you have it (as somebody once said… it wasn’t that other bloke, was it?).
So, that is my Sunday blog and apologise for not doing a warm-up review on Friday, but I was travelling around the world, didn’t get home and only to the ground very late. In fact, I got to the ground, in a tizwas, the security stopped me and said, “you can’t go in here”. Why? I cried, “because we don’t know who you are.” But I don’t know who you are, I retaliated. “And?” This whole thing was getting stupid, and then I saw one of the old Spurs players, who also happened to be a friend, he said “hello,” I said hello back and walked with him into the stadium. Nothing more was said, other than I ended up having a chat with the mentioned player, and missing a few minutes of the warm-up buzz in the process. I’ve been so many times to that stadium that you would have thought that the security guards knew me, but alas, if you are looking down at your shoes you are not going to see any prettiness.
I got a quick nod from Poch and we all settled down to a rare 3 pm kick off.
Anyway, a prognosis (or if you prefer a diagnosis or even a conclusion... I am not fussy... they are all words after all
), they all work for me (God, doesn’t he waffle… as the little fellow says in my head). Overall we deserved it and probably could have scored more. We had 67% of the possession. I thought all players played well, but a special mention to Eriksen who, again, played magnificently. Shots on target (4) were spread evenly, but our pedigree showed over their hardworking slog.
We both needed the points urgently, for different reasons. But from this position, I think Stoke City will go down, along with WBA and probably Southampton or Huddersfield, but neither are certain.
As I said previously, we could take an extra 18 points if we beat City (h), Brighton (a), Watford (h), WBA (a), Newcastle (h) and then finally Leicester at our last “home” game before moving to our new home, back at White Hart Lane.
So, that is that until we next meet again.
Yours, Don Scully.
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