Another game, another marauding gaggle of angry fans sharing their valuable insight with football’s online world. This is the tip of an unpleasant iceberg and one that fervently believes the former Wolves man shouldn’t be a starting XI player for Tottenham. Someone on the blog even called Doherty mediocre mid-game. At which point I looked at the in-play stats. Matt was doing quite well. So let’s see how it finished up for the boy, shall we? Or was the hysterical abuse, actually on point?
Doherty made 5 Interceptions, more than any other Spurs player, and depending upon where you get your statistics from, only Rüben Neves did better in the discipline.
Aerial duels is another one. Doherty matched Ben Davies, and was just pipped by Eric Dier in this area. 75%, so nothing to get aerated about.
In fact, across the board, the Irishman didn’t particularly stink the place out at all; his successful passing accuracy was 83% which is pretty respectable. For balance, one aspect that Matt didn’t have all his own way was losing the ball, but again, this wasn’t anything that ought to have got folk unhinged.
Losing possession 8 times, with 3 of those occasions being in one’s own half, is yet to be declared a capital offence, especially when none of those losses resulted in a shot on our goal.
Conclusion? Less yelping, more understanding.
Class dismissed.