Alrighty, we conceded another goal on Saturday, so let’s have a look and see what we think of it:
Conclusion: probably Spurs got through us a bit too easily there, but they played their hand to perfection as the move developed. Looking again, the key seems to be Jenas beating Bullard and attacking a space that Murphy had just vacated to cover infield (before he realised Jenas was beating Bullard) and that was not watched by Paul Konchesky (who had been attacking).
This meant that Jenas could keep running until he half-encountered Brede Hangeland. Drawing Hangeland was one thing, but Aaron Hughes had (rightly) followed Roman Pavlyuchenko so John Paintsil was left on his own in the middle, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. He really did have to close down Bentley, it was just a question of whether he might have somehow been able to do this while also keeping an eye on Fraizier Campbell. If he erred in his positioning it wasn’t by much (that’s how I see it anyway), it’s just that by now the defence was so broken we didn’t have much chance of salvation if Spurs played the attack well, which Bentley and Campbell certainly did.
So no real finger pointing this time, although in retrospect Bullard might have been a bit cleverer in stopping Jenas, by fair means or foul. After that the only thing that might’ve saved us would’ve been Dempsey or Murphy getting back, but as you can see they were both 10 yards behind the attack. Ho hum.
Interested to hear others’ views here, it looks like a couple of mistakes growing into something bigger through circumstances and good attacking play to me.
