Here are our Tottenham Hotspur talking points after their 2-1 defeat at Newcastle United in the Premier League on Sunday afternoon
A fit and sharp Dominic Solanke is going to have a field day within this Tottenham Hotspur team.
That’s not hope. That’s simply looking at the facts. The 26-year-old netted 19 Premier League goals for Bournemouth last season in a team that, while it had a fine campaign in finishing 12th in the table, scored 20 goals fewer than Ange Postecoglou’sSpurs side and the England international netted more than a third of them.
In their first three matches of this campaign, Tottenham have sent 48 shots at goal, three admittedly coming from a rusty Solanke in his first game at Leicester around an ankle injury he played on with. They have created many, many more openings. There were so many times on Sunday at St James’ Park when dangerous balls were played into the six-yard box into space where Solanke or Richarlison would have been.One in particular from Brennan Johnson was perfect, fired low and into that killer space between goalkeeper and the edge of the six-yard box. It’s one of the key sectors Tottenham’s wingers are told to go for with their low crosses and Johnson has also become adept at getting on to the end of such balls from the other flank, something drilled into him by the coaching staff.
Unfortunately nobody had shown the movement to do the same for his ball on this occasion and it might have sealed the game in Spurs’ favour had they done so. Solanke will feast on such opportunities when he returns. A number of his Bournemouth goals came from such balls into the box.
Yet he was not there on Sunday. Only Spurs could sign a £65million striker who hadn’t missed a single game throughout all of last season only to manage to injure him in his first game and then see their other forward pick up a muscle problem days later in training.
Everton fans will point out that Richarlison missed only 15 games across four years with them. In just two years at Spurs he’s already missed 22 and been unable to play a bigger part in more because he was either carrying a problem or just coming back from one.
Even 19-year-old prolific striker Will Lankshearmissed only one game in his 32-goal season last time out for the U21s. He would have been on the first team bench on Sunday had he not picked up a hamstring injury for the U21s this month which will keep him out for the next couple of weeks. Fate enjoys laughing at Tottenham Hotspur.
On Sunday at Newcastle United, Spurs’ performance was light years ahead of their two previous displays at St James’ Park. On those days they collapsed under the pressure of the noisy home crowd and Eddie Howe’s side, shipping 10 goals across the two games and scoring once.
This time around they weathered the early storm and the crowd noise before dominating the game, allowing Newcastle just three shots on target and forcing Nick Pope into plenty of saves at the other end – six in all. They had 66% of the possession, played 415 passes to Newcastle’s 180 and had 20 shots to the hosts’ nine, with the Magpies’ defence required to make 33 clearances and eight blocks as well as those six Pope saves.
However, as was the case at Leicester, they failed to bury their opponents in a hail of goals as they did at home against Everton and when that happens you heap more pressure on any little slip-up by the defence.
The script of course dictated that would happen and they were duly punished. Postecoglou’s leader in the backline Cristian Romero was caught out of position twice and Newcastle’s Harvey Barnes and Alexander Isak profited behind him, both goals coming against the run of play, but the record books will not care for that, only the scoreline.
