Well, that was a much better performance. Of course, somehow Spurs always find a way to disappoint. Anyway, we're now officially out of the relegation zone on goal difference. Strike up the band!
For those of you who don't know...Tottenham and Portsmouth like to trade managers and players between themselves. Our current manager Harry Redknapp and forward Defoe used to manage/play for Portsmouth this season. Sol Campbell (aka Judas) used to play for Spurs before he suddenly moved to our arch-rivals Arsenal and now wears a Portsmouth jersey. Point being, all this familiarity added more drama to the already important league game.
It was a wide-open game. We out shot them 29-12. If it weren't for some spectacular saves by James we would have tonked them. Basically we dominated the game. However, 30 minutes in Roman got tackled hard from behind. So hard, that I heard the tackle on television. He had to come off on a stretcher and I hope his ankle isn't broken. Then, right before halftime, our captain King had to come off with a hamstring injury. Did I mention that our goalie has a strained groin? It's so bad that he doesn't even take the kicks anymore. Problem is, we don't have anyone else. He's our best option even though he's injured.
So, after dominating the game and not scoring, the game was perfectly setup for...a goal on a deflection. The ball grazed the bottom of Bale's foot and instead of stopping it or slowing down, it merely re-directed the shot perfectly an inch inside the post. All of a sudden we were down 0-1 and wounded. The commentator said that "we'll get to see what Tottenham are made of now", and to that end we fought well. Defoe finally scored, and had a pretty good game otherwise. However, I was left with a feeling of disappointment when the late winner was sent wide. It was just Bent and the goalie James...and although completely unmarked, Bent sent his header from 5 feet away (aka a "sitter") "wide right".
There were a lot of good things to take from this game. In typical Spurs style though, they seem to excite to only to disappoint either through a dominating performance and then injury or letting in a goal, or coming back to almost win it but falling incomprehensibly short. As one podcast said this week, "we're all serving our life-sentence at White Heart Lane". We can't leave even if we wanted to.