Hello and welcome to The View from the Lane, our new Tottenham Hotspur podcast from The Athletic. I am your host Jack Pitbrook and today, as ever, I'm joined by Charlie Ecclesher and James Moore. And it's been another good weekend for Tottenham. Yesterday they won two one at Wolves in pretty horrible conditions. I was lucky enough to be there at Molyneux and it was really good fun. It was a really good fun. It was a really exciting end-to-end game, very, very difficult conditions, but it felt like a kind of classic Jose Marino win in the sort that we haven't really seen that much yet at Tottenham. After Lucas Morris scored early on, wolves were kind of all over Spurs, all game, and Spurs spent most of the game camped in their own box. Adama Troyo was getting past Patongan basically every time he went forward. Diego Jotta was causing lots of problems for Serge Orier. And this is kind of what happens sometimes with Jose Marino teams is they get forced back. You give the opposition the ball and you hope that you'll be okay. And they were right up until the point where Traorre found the top corner for 20 yards. And yet I think the the, like, the beauty and effectiveness of Marino team is that you don't need to dominate to score,

you don't need the ball to win the game. And Spurs, having barely had a kick, managed to win it

right at the very end after they won a free kick out on the left, brought on Christian Erickson.

Erickson's free kick forced a corner. Ericksonson then took the corner of a tong and headed it in. So it was a funny game in the sense that Spurs spent so much of it defending. And, you know, if Wolves had been a little bit more precise in the final third, then Wolves could have won, you know, three, four, one. But they didn't. And it leaves you asking that big question after a game like this, which is, did Spurs actually deserve it? Well, also, it's one of those games, I think, with, we need to, we need more, a bigger sample size.

But if this is something that we're going to see more of Tottenham winning games away from, you know, really tough games away from home where they haven't played that well, then that's an amazing skill to have.

I guess the worry would be, will they get away with it if they're dominated territorially by other teams. But for what it was, I mean, it was a great win. And wolves were a really, really good side. And most teams go to Molyneux and get dominated. Yeah. I mean, that ground has been a bit of a graveyard for the top sides in the last two years. I think more or less everyone has gone there and been beaten, obviously, Liverpool a couple of times.

I think Manchester United a couple of times.

Chelsea went there and got a very good result in September.

But they were beaten last season.

But yeah, exactly.

And for Spurs to come away with a win, in those circumstances,

and not particularly pleasant afternoon weather-wise, I think is a pretty good sign of some newly rediscovered resolve. Completely, yeah. And let's not forget that Spurs didn't win in a way league game between Fullham away on, I think, the 20th of January and West Ham away, which I think was something like the 20-something of November. So it was a 10-month gap. And now they've won, after beating West Ham, they've won this one as well. And like, it's just, it's the sort of November. There was a 10-month gap. But now they've won, after beating West Ham, they've won this one as well.

And like, it's just, it's the sort of result they weren't getting. They wouldn't have got under Pocitino, I think. You know, there's lots of different ways you can look at that. There's the way they defended much more deep and compact than they would done under Pocitino. There was a success at set pieces. like Marino made a,

Marino pointed out on his press conference,

oh yeah,

recently we were really success at set pieces. Like Marino made a, Mariniio pointed out in his press conference, oh yeah, recently, we were really bad at set pieces, but now we're really good at them, both attacking and defensively. It was one of those, like, Marino is certainly not averse to reminding people how good he is as a coach and what he's been working on. And so, I think it's totally, I mean, this is the kind of thing that when you say it sometimes,

people say, oh, you're just being really reactive.

But it's totally legitimate to say this is the kind of win they wouldn't have got two months to go under Pochitino. It was a very merino win. The irony of that is in Pochitino's first season, you might remember, in kind of around the autumn time I think they had three or four away wins yeah late goals like

swanzy villa hull yeah some time. I think they had three or four away wins. Yeah, late goals. Yeah, late goals. Swansea, Villa,

hull. Yeah. And I think Swansea was in driving rain as well. And Erickson's skiddley, yeah, yeah,

exactly. And all of those games, spurs probably on the balance of play, maybe could, perhaps even

should have lost. That's definitely something that's kind of gone out of their game in the last couple of years.

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