Jose’s boys too sharp for Spurs
Man United 2 Tottenham 1
8
Alexis Sanchez has scored eight goals in his eight appearances at Wembley for club and country
AT THE end of a tumultuous weekend i n north London, Tottenham Hotspur had a golden chance yesterday to emphasise the shift in power in their rivalry with Arsenal. They blew it.
As Arsenal tried to come to terms with the impending exit of Arsene Wenger and the task of forcing their way back into the elite of the Premier League, Spurs seemed poised to move closer to winning their first trophy for a decade.
Instead, a dispiritingly familiar narrative played out for Spurs fans in the FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United at Wembley. Close but no cigar. For the eighth time in eight successive FA Cup semis, they failed to get the job done.
And so this fine side built by this fine manager, Mauricio Pochettino, this team that we acclaim for the style of their football and the ambition of their play will go another season without winning a trophy. There is a danger that their moment is passing.
Spurs are still progressing and it was imperative that they finished in the top four to ensure they hosted Champions League football at their new stadium next season. That objective is within sight but there are more and more questions to be asked about this team’s ability to come through when everything is on the line.
They are not getting any closer to winning the title. They have finished fifth, third and second in Pochettino’s three full seasons in charge and are likely to be fourth this time, but it is now 27 years since they won the FA Cup. Their last trophy was the League Cup, then the Carling Cup, which they won in 2008.
The most worrying question for Spurs fans is whether results like this 2- 1 defeat against a United team who have been criticised for the dourness of their play this season will encourage vultures to circle around the team’s star assets such as Harry Kane and Dele Alli.
Pochettino may say that the FA Cup is no longer germane to Tottenham’s ambitions but the best players want trophies and they only hang around so long when the cabinet stays empty, particularly when they know that their chairman, Daniel Levy, is earning a king’s ransom but often pays his players less than they could earn at rival clubs.
If players are playing for less money, they need compensations. Medals are a compensation but medals keep slipping away. Spurs might be a better footballing side than United but United deserved this victory. They had the will and the confidence to win. When the moment was there for Spurs, when they took the lead in the first half and tore United to shreds, they turned their backs on it.
Sometimes Spurs look unbeatable. They are capable of sweeping moves of scintillating brilliance, like the one that led to the opening goal. A driven pass of ambition and perfect execution from Davinson Sanchez set Christian Eriksen free on the right and his flawless cross to the back post was met by the run of Alli.
In moments like that, Spurs can tear the best teams apart. But they also seem incapable of maintaining t heir concentration in the way that trophy- winning sides do. Those lapses in focus cost them dear in the Champions League against Juventus and in the first half one cost them against United.
They were cruising really. United had created little of note. And then Mousa Dembele was caught dawdling on the ball on the edge of his own box when he ought to have sensed danger. Paul Pogba dispossessed him and curled in a perfect cross for Alexis Sanchez to score. Too often that is the way with Spurs. Too often in the biggest matches, they let themselves down. Too often when the balance of play suggests they are the better team, they allow their opponents back into the match. These are harsh observations because they are a wonderful side to watch but they make the difference between winning trophies and going home emptyhanded again. Much of it is down to the finest of margins, like the moment seconds before half-time when Eric Dier’s piledriver clipped Chris Small in g’ s backside, left David de Ge a flat-footed and thumped against the outside of a post and away to safety. Like the moment midway through that first half when Spurs were rampant and United were under siege and Alli played a ball with the outside of his right foot to Kane, who fed Eriksen, who dragged his shot inches wide. Like the shot from Eriksen 17 minutes from time that scattered water bottles next to De Gea’s left-hand post and made the Spurs fans at the far end believe that the blur of white movement was t he United net bulging. It wasn’t.
Sometimes, Spurs make life difficult for themselves, too. They do needless things that the best teams do not do. Early in the second half, Alli raked his studs down Jesse Lingard’s calf in midfield and earned a booking. It was needless and it was malicious. Too often, Alli walks a disciplinary tightrope and he is one of Spurs’ most influential players.
Those moments make a difference and the longer this game wore on, the more belief seemed to drain away from Spurs. The phrase about a team ‘knowing how to win’ seemed apt here. The magnitude of closing out the victory seemed to get to Spurs in the second half.
Spurs shrank. United grew. And so it wasn’t a surprise when, midway t hrough t he second half, United took the lead. There should not have been any danger. United did not put together a clever move. Their power and their belief were just too strong.
Maybe there is a question mark about why Pochettino plays Michel Vorm in the cup. He is not alone in selecting a different goalkeeper for the competition but there was a suspicion Vorm might have done better with Ander Herrera’s shot when it went underneath him.
Hugo Lloris might have saved it. He is better than Vorm. That is why he starts in the Premier League. If Spurs want to win a trophy, they need to learn to make harder decisions. Being fair does not win cups. It does not end trophy droughts.
Eight semi-final defeats out of eight says something about a club. It says something about their mentality. Pochettino has got close to changing it but time is running out to close the deal.