Spurs get a winning start
Londoners hold on to defeat Newcastle
Dele Alli silenced the complaints about Tottenham’s lack of signings as the England midfielder sealed a 2-1 win at Newcastle in their Premier League opener yesterday.
Mauricio Pochettino’s side are the first club in the Premier League era not to make a single signing since the introduction of the pre-season transfer window.
That low-key approach has frustrated Tottenham fans, but Alli lifted the gloom with a clinical header to seal all the points at St James’ Park.
Jan Vertonghen opened the scoring with an early header and Joselu’s equaliser was quickly erased by Alli as all three goals came in the first 18 minutes.
Pochettino said: “I am so proud of the performance in the circumstances. Newcastle are a very good team and they had some chances to score more than one, but sometimes in football you need some luck as well as effort. With all of the circumstances, we prepared for the game with a lot of players that only started training on Monday.”
The action continues today as Liverpool face West Ham United and Southampton play Burnley before defending champions Manchester City take on Unai Emery’s Arsenal.
From the moment Jurgen Klopp first patted the “This Is Anfield” sign inside the stadium tunnel, he has relished his duty at Liverpool to lead not so much a club as a creed.
He bounced up and down with tired, emotional travelling fans at 6am in Kiev. He joyously gatecrashed a summer tour singalong in Michigan. To observe Klopp in full flight is to understand why, wherever he goes as a manager, he inspires such fervid adoration from the faithful. He positions himself not as some transient custodian, but one stitched into the tapestries of his clubs’ traditions.
Already, in a little under three years with Liverpool, there have been enough evenings — the 4-3 triumph over Dortmund, the two Champions League wins against City, the Mohammad Salah-led drubbing of Roma — to carve him a notch in Anfield folklore.
And they will need Salah and Robert Firmino firing on all cylinders and the new recruits including Xherdan Shaqiri clicking from the outset. But equally, it pays to recall the words of Liverpool chief executive Ian Ayre, who declared at Klopp’s unveiling in 2015 that it was only a “matter of time” before the German started bringing in the silverware.
Ayre must wait at least until 2019 for his next chance to be proved right. The inconvenient truth, for all that Klopp’s sides have sparkled en route to two European finals, is that he still has no palpable prize with which to adorn his revolution. It is becoming a minor curse: of the seven cup finals he has contested as a manager, he has won just one.
Klopp has had every liberty to craft the team of his choosing. Of the first-choice players he inherited from Brendan Rodgers, only one, James Milner, has retained a key presence. He has made Salah a superstar, moulded Firmino into the conductor of his side’s signature high press, and turned to young Trent AlexanderArnold for some home-grown backbone. Far be it from Klopp to stand still, mind: Liverpool’s net summer spend is more than double that of Chelsea, the next most profligate.
Perfect start
To an already heady cocktail of talent, Klopp has added the powerful Alisson Becker, purging all memory of Loris Karius’ haplessness in goal, the versatile Fabinho, as comfortable at right back as he is in midfield, the Guinean starlet Naby Keita and Shaqiri.
City will take some stopping and Klopp will be looking for the perfect start against West Ham today.
Back in Newcastle, despite Tottenham’s hard-fought victory, there was another August blank for Harry Kane, who started even though the England striker had only returned to training on Monday following his notable World Cup exploits.
The World Cup Golden Boot winner has now gone 14 games spanning 988 minutes without scoring in the opening month of the campaign, though on this occasion, it mattered little. The season kickedoff to the backdrop of a protest staged by hundreds of Newcastle fans outside the nearby branch of Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct.
Ashley, the club’s notoriously parsimonious billionaire owner, saw fit to spend £90 million on the ailing department store group House of Fraser.
Tottenham fans appear rather less dissatisfied, despite their club failing to make a single addition to Pochettino’s squad since the end of last season. Such inactivity proved no impediment as the visitors rode their luck to seal a repeat of their opening day victory at St James’ Park 12 months ago.
In yesterday’s later matches, Chelsea got off to a comfortable 3-0 win over Huddersfield Town. There were also wins for Bournemouth over Cardiff, Crystal Palace over Fulham and Watford over Brighton.