GOD HELP RIVALS IF THEY HIT TOP GEAR
As Tottenham enjoy best start to a season since 1963...
THE song remains the same. Spurs did not play particularly well. Their football did not quicken the pulse often. But they won. And they won relatively comfortably. Not only that, they moved level with Manchester City in second place in the Premier League. If this is what they are like when they are idling, God help the rest of them if they move up through the gears.
If Spurs are still being damned with faint praise, it is perhaps worth noting that they have now won 23 points from their ten league games this season, a mark which represents their highest points tally at this stage of a top-flight campaign for nearly 60 years. They have resilience and tactical acumen to spare under Antonio Conte and they are stacking up more building blocks with every game.
‘To see the intensity we played with tonight was really positive,’ said Conte after the match, reserving special praise for Matt Doherty Ivan Perisic and Yves Bissouma. ‘It shows if you work in the right way, the performance of your players is always up. I am really delighted for the players because this performance repaid the effort they put in every day. We are doing everything with common sense.’
Harry Kane scored the crucial first goal, a second-half penalty he won himself when he was tripped by Jordan Pickford after the England goalkeeper had made a mistake that will give Gareth Southgate something else to worry about as his defence drops all around him. There is no reason to worry about Kane, though. His goal took him within eight of Jimmy Greaves’ all-time Spurs record.
Spurs sealed victory with a late strike from Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg but they were grateful to Everton for their profligacy in front of goal. The visitors missed two gilt-edged chances in the first half but their manager, Frank Lampard, will be worried by their toothlessness in attack. Everton were routed 5-0 here late last season and Lampard appears to have banished the sense of chaos that was enveloping the club then.
Still, the game was not a classic. In an interview that appeared before the game, Richarlison, the Brazil striker who left Everton for Spurs in the summer, suggested his departure owed much to a ‘lack of ambition’ at the Merseyside club. In the context of this match, it was rather an unfortunate choice of words. Because this match screamed a lot of things: pragmatism, caution, opportunism perhaps. But not ambition.
Spurs started the stronger of the two teams and Son was creating chances almost from the kick-off. He found Kane with a curling cross from the left but as Kane tried to glance the ball in, he failed to make proper contact with it and it bounced off a defender for a corner.
A minute later, Son’s quick thinking unlocked the Everton defence again, clipping a quick free-kick down the left that released Perisic. The Croatian crossed deep to the back post where he found Richarlison unmarked but the Brazil forward could only balloon his header over the bar.
Son kept going. A few minutes later, he burst into the Everton area and slalomed between Seamus Coleman and Idrissa Gueye. He tumbled over Gueye’s right leg and the home crowd yelled for a penalty but the referee waved play on. Son did get a free kick on the edge of the box soon afterwards but he hit it into the heart of the wall.
Midway through the half, though, Everton should have taken the lead. They launched a long ball out of defence and Demarai Gray took it skilfully in his stride as he turned past Rodrigo Bentancur and sprinted clear of him. Neal Maupay was screaming for the ball in the middle but Gray went alone and lifted his shot high over the bar from six yards out. On the touchline, Lampard put his head in his hands.
The visitors missed another golden chance three minutes before the interval. This time, the opportunity came from a Spurs mix-up. Hojbjerg and Cristian Romero both went for a loose ball and when both of them missed it and collided with each other, Amadou Onana raced in on goal.
With only Lloris to beat, Onana pushed the ball just too far in front of him and stretched to make his shot, lifting it just too high. ‘When I wanted to shoot,’ Onana said, ‘the ball jumps a bit, so I put it over.’
Spurs hit back on the stroke of half-time when Kane whipped in a cross from the left. Richarlison forced his way in front of his marker ten yards out and met the ball first time on the volley. Once again, the ball flew too high. The Everton fans behind the goal breathed a sigh of relief. Richarlison, the striker who left them for £60million in the summer, was the last man they wanted to score.
Richarlison was substituted six minutes after the break when he limped off with what looked like a calf injury. We are at the stage of the season now when players have little recovery time left ahead of the World Cup.
If Richarlison has torn a muscle, he will be sweating on his place in the Brazil squad for the tournament in Qatar.
Spurs shook off his loss and looked like a better side with his replacement, Bissouma, dominating midfield. Kane stung the hands of Pickford with a volley that he slammed into the turf and which the Everton goalkeeper pushed away. The rebound fell to Son but he blasted his first time shot high over the crossbar.
It was only a brief reprieve for Everton, though. A couple of minutes later, Pickford spilled a shot from Doherty that he really should have held on to and Kane pounced on the rebound.
Kane nudged the ball round Pickford and Pickford brought him down as he desperately tried to recover. The referee pointed to the spot and Kane dispatched the penalty decisively.
Spurs put the game out of reach four minutes from time when Kane freed Bentancur on the right and his cross found Hojbjerg unmarked 12 yards out. Hojbjerg had time to take the ball down, jink to his right and clip a shot towards goal. It took a deflection off the shin of Alex Iwobi and the deflection took it beyond the dive of Pickford and into the net.