The Athletic

Hello and welcome with The View from the Lane, a Tottenham Hospital podcast from The Athletic.

My name is Jack Pitbrook and I'm joined for now by James Moore and later in the show by Optus Duncan Alexander.

Now James, it's been a busy week. We'll come on to the Fulham game later on, but you must be feeling pretty positive after yesterday's win at Sheffield United.

Yeah, I mean, I thought it was a much better performance and a lot of the kind of criticisms we've leveled at the team in the last few weeks, you know, particularly the kind of sitting back and being passive in the second half. I don't really think you could kind of fairly say applied to this match. I mean, maybe there was like a five-minute spell where it kind of felt like they kind of sat in a little bit and that probably was the spell in which Sheffield United scored their goal. But I mean, more or less immediately after that, it kind of felt like they went out on the front for again. I think it was a fairly comfortable win. I know, I know Sheffield United have had a dreadful season, but I think it's quite important to look at the manner in which they've been losing. This isn't like a sort of Derby County 2007-2008 kind of situation. They've been, I think they've pretty much always been in the game until the end, you know, even against the best teams. You know, they played Manchester United kind of at the height of United's form just before Christmas and lost three-two at home having led and then kind of come back and whatever. So they've kind of always been in games. I think from having a look through the results yesterday, I think it's the fourth time they've conceded three goals in the game this season and only the fifth time they've lost by more than a single goal. So, you know, I'd never you can look at it and sort of dismiss it as just being a kind of comfortable win against the poor side, you know, there are a sort of decent side who just aren't winning matches, which I'd, I'd think you just dismiss it entirely on the basis of them being shit, is what I'm saying. Yeah, I think that's fair enough. I think people watch more Sheffern United than I do, but it seems to me like their main issues they've replaced a good goalkeeper with a bad one.

But the bigger picture is Tottenham and yeah, I agree with you. I think there was that five-minute wobble where it looked like, oh my God, it's going to be like full and wolves and Crystal Palace all over again. When McGolders scored that header and, you know, I did think it was a bad goal for Spurs to concede, and they probably got what they deserved for taking their eye off the ball for a few minutes. But taking the performance overall, yeah, really good. Good to see Tottenham play like that, and particularly in a way game, and in a competitive away game. Thought the change of system work well. I thought they could have created more chance than they did. There are quite a few moments, I think, Spurs, where they were, you know, they had a three on three or a four on three, and the final pass wasn't right or the finish wasn't right. And on, you know, on another day, they would have created and scored more. One moment that I think we have to get straight into, really, is the goal from Andombole, which was just incredible.

Like I'm sure that everyone who is listening to this podcast has seen it many times.

I don't need to describe it.

Suffice to say that it was just an amazing piece of imagination and execution.

Like I don't think anybody watching it anywhere in the world thought that was on when he did it.

And that's always, you know, for me as a fan or for a lot of fans, one thing that I love

watching in football is being surprised. Like it's seeing, seeing a really good player do something

and thinking, Christ, like I had no idea he was going to even try that. Whether it's a pass

or a type of finish or a skill,

being surprised is great. I mean, it is why we like football. And I can't, James, when were

you last, can you think of any other goals, Spurs goal that was as surprising as that?

Well, it's interesting you mentioned that surprise factor because that, that ties into

a thing that I quite often tweet which is sometimes when

you see a lot of people describe a goal as amazing before you've actually seen it when you then watch it

it doesn't seem quite as good because you've kind of gone in with the expectation of it being

amazing and you know there's going to be a goal so I kind of actually feel like that goal if I hadn't

seen it live and I'd seen a lot of tweets about it and then I'd watched it on a match over there or whatever in that evening, I'd kind of almost probably be a little bit underwhelmed by it. But I think it's the fact that it was so sort of instantaneous. It came at exactly the right moment of the game for Spurs, obviously not long after they'd conceded that goal. And it's just like, it was the last thing you really expected him to do

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