Spur of the moment!
Christian Eriksen celebrates his late winner with Dele Alli as Tottenham squeeze past resilient Brighton
TOTTENHAM.....1 BRIGHTON........0
IN the end it was a long ranger that did it. Of course it was. A desperate long ranger on a long and desperate night for Tottenham, when all pretensions to grandeur had been abandoned and all that remained were punts.
It had been that way for all bar the opening half an hour when the penny first dropped that their pretty moves were getting sucked one by one into a green swamp of Brighton bodies. That is when the shelling started — have a look, have a swing, have a hope, maybe it will work out this time.
For 88 minutes it didn’t. Shots were going over the bar, wide, straight to Mat Ryan. Before Christian Eriksen found the bottom corner, Spurs had tried 28 shots. Twenty were from distance and almost all were useless. To get an idea of how desperately bleak it looked, consider this: 10 minutes from time Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino did something he hasn’t done in 20 months and gave Vincent Janssen a game.
That is not to be excessively cruel to Janssen, whose season has in part been spent training with the development squad. But it is a reflection of how frazzled Pochettino had become by the puzzle of Chris Hughton’s Brighton.
They had defended with their faces, their chests, thighs, bellies, any part of what we now call the natural silhouette. They did it magnificently, a made-to-measure stifling of one of the best teams in the league. Sometimes it was grubby — 13 fouls tells a story, as will Son Heung-min’s bruises. But if Brighton had won a point in their battle for survival, then it would have been a case of ‘Good on them’.
Except it wasn’t, because up popped Eriksen from 25 yards and a low driller off his left foot beat Ryan. The keeper might have done better, or maybe he was just unsighted. But who from Spurs will care?
They have made a hash of these winnable games on the run-in, beaten by Southampton and Burnley. But they got over the line here by a whisker and with it they should soon secure their place in the top four. Their final league games are against West Ham, Bournemouth and Everton, and the recent calamities of Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea have given them breathing room.
A fine achievement when it comes, but Pochettino will know how close he came to letting this win slip. He said afterwards: ‘It was difficult. I am so happy — we never gave up. Brighton were so tough to break down. But we try and try and try.
‘The performance was good, the effort massive, and I am very pleased. Christian has that quality. Now the top four is still in our hands and we deserve credit.’
They do, but so do Brighton. They nearly pulled it off. Nearly might not save them, though.
They were up against it the minute the team sheets dropped. Pochettino had gone big. All in, really. With five changes to the side beaten by Manchester City on Saturday you could argue it was his strongest available 11,
certainly his most offensive. Crammed among them were no fewer than five attaching players and the recalled full back pairing of Kieran Trippier and Danny Rose, each with a brief to bomb on in a 4-1-4-1.
The system was relevant, if only for the fact it was yet another change, as has become a Pochettino theme. In five games going back to the first leg of the City Champions League tie he has started with five different shapes — nice variety if you can pull it off.
Brighton came with a rather more familiar look. Not so much in personnel, with Hughton making six changes to his last side, but the message to defend and hold ground was the same as it was at Wolves on Saturday. That game was an exercise in tedium, but it was an exercise in getting what was needed. They were more than happy to replicate here.
For so long, they followed that blueprint to the letter. Against creators like Tottenham, that is impressive, not least because the siege started immediately.
In some sort of order, Jan Vertonghen put a header over from a set-piece, Dele Alli failed to connect when attempting to backheel a Eriksen shot goalwards, and Eriksen launched another effort over the bar.
They were bitty chances. Snatched shots. When they did build something nice, with Eriksen splitting the backline and Lucas Moura playing first time across goal to Alli, Lewis Dunk slid in to cut the final leg of the supply line. Along with centre back partner Shane Duffy he was magnificent.
As the clock counted down Toby Alderweireld hit a post and a bunch of long rangers missed their mark. ‘I thought we were going to do it,’ Hughton said.
But then Eriksen took possession and ruined all that. A fine goal and potentially an important one for both clubs.