Good morning my giddy ones. Judging by some of the fan comments online last night, I’m not sure ‘giddy’ accurately describes some of you steping out of your emotional tumble dryers at full time.
Let’s start with the coaches.
To use Fat Sam’s wonderful parlance, Poch ‘out-tacticked’ Conte!
It is difficult to express what an achievement this was without degenerating into the sort of gibbering caveman-ees typically seen and heard on Arsenal TV.
The first half was insufferably tense just to watch, Christ knows what it was like to participate in; like playing Mahjong whilst consuming copious amounts of cocaine is my best guess.
We’ve heard lots about Chelsea’s adoption of ‘three at the back’ and how successful it is.
When out team was announced last night, I was struggling to get my head around the announcement that we too were going ‘three at the back’.
I can be as slow as the next man, but I haven’t just got off the banana boat. About 5 seconds into the game, it was evident that we were in actual fact playing as we have frequently been playing, with Bonzo and Rose playing offensively up the wings.
What happened last night was to some extent the equivalent of PG Tipps introducing the pyramid tea bag.
Which is to say we know these two are virtually incapable of staying in a flat back four. But what Poch did was to tweak it a little.
That little tweak was more than enough though. Just as the Advertising Standards Agency actually ruled that triangulated tea bags were an improvement on the traditional ones, what Poch did with our back four was also a subtle but massive game changer.
What underpinned this tweak, was dropping Wanyama a shade deeper.
And boy did this work.
But why it worked was that whilst Bonzo n’ Rose played higher up the park, they actually remembered to operate primarily as defenders.
This is was inspired.
This, plus the rampaging Wanyama in the centre, completely disrupted Chelsea’s rhythm and invention.
Chances wise, Chelsea fluffed their lines. But it was Spurs that pitched in and denied them opportunity after opportunity.
Hazard was their main fluffer.
Dele Alli refused to fluff.
Full player ratings to follow.
