For those who haven’t heard, I had the joy yesterday of watching Tottenham completely thrash Wigan in the English Premier League 9-1.
At halftime Spurs were leading 1-0 and had completely controlled the match (we could have been up 3-0). The second half saw 9 goals in the span of 45 minutes! Jermain Defoe scored a hat trick in 7 minutes and ended the game with 5 goals, something only two other players in the Premier League have ever done. It was also the second fastest hat trick in Premier League history. Although Aaron Lennon only scored 1 goal, he was the terrorizing force on many plays. Wigan’s defense was atrocious. Watching the game I felt that every time we got the ball we were going to score…really, even the times we didn’t score in the second half it was really close to going in. If it weren’t for Wigan’s keeper making some great saves, we could have reached double digits. Wigan’s only goal shouldn’t have been allowed (it was controlled in the box by a hand, similar to the France Ireland match a few days ago). It actually reminded me of a few high school games I played in, most notably one game against Mitchell where we thrashed them by a similar score line. This just doesn’t happen in a top flight professional league.
According to ESPN, this is the second biggest blowout in Premier League history. The first biggest blowout was Manchester United’s drubbing of Ipswich 9-0 in 1995. Unfortunately for Wigan, the whipping boy in the top 3 biggest margins of victory in Premier League history before yesterday have all been relegated that year. The commentators said a few times that this is the kind of result that many teams never recover from (which is supported by the previous few sentences). It was so bad that today Wigan announced that it will be offering a full refund to all of the Wigan fans that attended the match. That’s how bad it was.
What was also so exciting about the 9 goals was that each were fantastic strikes. It’s not like these were garbage goals. Even the goal that was scored an own goal was really scored off of a fantastic free kick by David Bentley that just happened to hit the cross bar and bounce in off the back of the keeper. Each shot was perfectly executed even if the defending was poor.
Another great part about this weekend/result is that all of the teams in the table around Spurs failed to win. Even Arsenal lost 0-1 to a strike from Bent, a Spurs player last season. This put us back up into fourth spot in the table – something Spurs fans have dreamed about achieving in recent years since it’s the last Champions League qualifying spot.
Finally, this game was also a great result in terms of personnel. We started the season on a tear and then Defoe and Lennon were suspended or injured. Not surprisingly, this was the first game back with both of them. Also, Redknapp finally saw what the rest of the fans have been calling for and put Robbie Keane on the bench and in his place a proper left-midfielder.
Taking all of these things into consideration, this was a massive weekend for Spurs in so many ways. It was a joy to watch. I’m definitely going to be saving this game for a long time on my computer…or at least the highlights.
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Scoreline:
From the time we scored our first goal to our last goal in the second half (51-90 minutes), we averaged a goal every 4.875 minutes. However, they all came within two distinct time frames. During the first spell (51-69 minutes), we averaged a goal every 3.6 minutes. During the second spell (87-90+ minutes), we averaged a goal almost every 2 minutes!
Tottenham Hotspur 9
Crouch 9, Defoe 51, Defoe 54, Defoe 58, Lennon 64, Defoe 69, Defoe 87, Kirkland (og) 88, Kranjcar 90
Wigan Athletic 1
Scharner 57