Brittle Spurs ditch full Moyes caution to offer Conte renewed hope
Don’t mess with the formula. With 71 minutes gone at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the first 45 of them a haze of empty content and trapped energy, Harry Kane bumped Angelo Ogbonna away with his back to the West Ham goal, flexing his glutes, aware of the beeping, flashing light on his internal radar. Behind him Son Heung-min had already begun to sprint.
Son knew, even before that surge of static had begun to crackle around the stands. We have seen this picture before. The pass from Kane was instant, fizzed with a kind of celebratory excitement. Son flexed his hip to alter the angle and rolled the ball into the far corner of the West Ham goal to make it 2-0 and kill a game that had only briefly flickered into life.
It is a source of pride at Spurs that Son and Kane hold that record for most mutually assisting couple in Premier League history. It has been a wonderful partnership. But it also points to a certain static quality. You two? Still?
Other attacking players have drifted in and out, a mercurial winger here, a jinking creator there, ghosts in the machine. But for all the churn around them, the procession of fill-ins and pressed-men, this Spurs era has still found nothing even close to the synergy, the basic magic of Kane-Son.
Son did start on the bench here, consequence of his own recent poor form. And in fairness Spurs were already 1-0 up against a doggedly mediocre West Ham by the time he came on. But somehow it all still felt a little in the balance, if only because everything is in the balance right now, even by the standards of a club where, let’s face it, things are pretty much always in the balance. “We haven’t lost to West Ham in our last 10 meetings! Win today and we go fourth!”
You do have to hand it to the Spurs stadium announcer, whose job it is to emote Spurs-ness into the surrounding air, to amplify essence of Spurs across the rooftops. He is a master of his job.
You could almost hear the old lags wincing in the stands at this show of brittle, fate-tempting hope just five minutes before kick-off.
We know. Everyone knows. Just, you know, don’t say it.
It had been a horrendous week for Spurs to this point, with two defeats, a manager sans gallbladder confined in Italy, and season-ending injury to their best midfielder. Here, though, was a chance for redemption. Somehow, despite seeming to lose pretty much every single game so far this season, Spurs could reclaim fourth spot with a win.
It is a part of the strange gravity of this team that for all the bruises along the way their season is still very much alive right now on three fronts.
Who knows: enough collapses, enough disappointing afternoons from here and they might even mount a title challenge.
Here Spurs also had to overcome the stodginess of their own starting XI, as Conte and Cristian Stellini picked a team that looked heavy on the carbs and light on sauce.
With David Moyes remaining steadfastly David Moyes there were 15 mainly defensive players on the pitch at kick-off. This was to be expected from West Ham, who have scored seven goals away from home all season.
But did Spurs really need to be quite this austere? To go full Moyes in reply, deeper Moyes, more Moyes than Moyes?
The first half was the most Sundayish of things. Spurs counter-pressed well, often winning the ball back 40 yards from goal, then seeming to abruptly run out of ideas.
But there was an instant change of tone and tempo after half-time, as the whole team stood further up the pitch and the wing backs Ben Davies and Emerson Royal stormed upfield à deux to fillet the West Ham defence.
The opening goal came from a brilliant forward pass from Pierre-Emile Højbjerg, threaded with just enough fade and cut to spin into the path of Davies. His pass inside was rolled into the corner by Royal, on a thrilling run through the centre.
Where does victory here leave this Spurs team? With Manchester United winning in the same afternoon there is now a clear sense of separation in the Premier League table.
We have a top three; and we have everyone else. Spurs, Newcastle, Fulham, Brighton and Brentford are all in the mix for fourth place. Liverpool, busy wrestling with their own invisible demons, seem the most likely to hit a consistent pitch of form.
For Spurs hope will lie in the second 45 minutes here, not the clenched and cautious first period.
Stellini suggested afterwards that the first half was necessary to create the second. Maybe. More likely this was
simply Spurs being Spurs, a slightly brittle thing, always reaching for the same emergency button in moments of doubt, but with a season that remains unexpectedly vital.