The Athletic

Hello everybody, I'm Danny Kelly, and this is, of course, the view from the Lane, the Athletics, Topham-Hotsburgh podcast. Today, I'm joined by two more chums from The Athletic, Jack Pitt Brook, and Charlie Eccleshare to reflect on that nil-nill-nill draw at Evertonon yesterday. I would make a point here because I think it's interesting. Charlie, you were there live and in the flesh. I watched it live on television and Jack, you've watched it actually because you were sorry, you were busy elsewhere. You've watched it this morning. So we're going to get slightly different views. What did you make of it, Charlie? Was it really as bad a game as you say in your piece? It wasn't great. It was interesting

actually though, again, just adding in a fourth way of what of consuming that game.

When I watched the highlights on Match the Day 2, it made it seem quite a lot more eventful

and interesting, though I guess it was quite short highlights,

so maybe, you know, you condense most games to a few minutes, it would seem fairly interesting.

It just never, I don't know, it felt like two teams for whom a point wasn't a disaster.

Spurs actually, I felt settled for a point quite early on, which surprised me a little bit

because Everton were missing a lot of

their best players and were pretty low on confidence, and I felt were flagging after that kind

of flurry of activity in the second half where they had the penalty, then it got overturned,

etc., etc. It was all right. It was just fairly low on quality, I thought, as I write in my piece and has been documented, Spurs, again, not having a shot on target.

And it was just too often their final ball at them down. They created opportunities to create opportunities, but then would mess up the past.

That's quite a long way from scoring goals, isn't it? Creating opportunities to create opportunities.

This is the thing. I feel like the bar is so low that we're kind of now celebrating the fact that, well, at least we're getting into positions to create chances to score goals. Like, of course, we haven't scored a goal in five and a half hours or whatever it is. But yeah, it's that's what the legacy of the Nuno era, I suppose.

What about you, Jack? You got up early, whatever one does early in the morning,

fed the cats or whatever, and put yourself through watching the Spurs-Ebbison game.

What did you make of the... Well, come on to Spurs, in a minute. What did you make of the game

itself? Well, I thought it was quite high energy. You know, there was lots of back and forth

and pressing and tackling.

But there was almost no, I don't think there was a single moment of quality in the final third at either end.

Apart from the moment where the penalty was given before it was taken away, it never felt like a goal was going to be scored at all.

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