Almost a home from home

GOALS: Everton 0-3 Spurs

for Spurs.

After the trials of Wembley, Spurs returned to familiar ground, Goodison, a good old Archibald Leitch stadium just like the Lane.

Tight ground, close crowd, small pitch, the old Spurs, it all fell into place, though with a new formation oh and a change in the calendar, that helped, as Spurs rolled over Everton.

Now here’s the caveat though. A friend of a friend is a gambler, especially on football, he watches every game from every league and before the season started he said Everton were the worst team he’d seen during the summer.

I don’t know if they were that good here.

They started brightly but once Spurs got going there really was only one team in it. A switch to the new formation helped, well the switch back to a back three helped. Some say it was a 3-3-3-1, with a kind of diamond in the middle. Could be more a 3-1-5-1, with the wing-backs more as wingers, they didn’t defend much.

Dier shielding the the trio of Toby, Jan and new record signing Davinson Sanchez. Well didn’t he look the part. The Colombian slipped in between the Belgian pair and looked like he’d been there for a while. Must be an Ajax thing. With the best defensive record over the last couple of seasons, Spurs went out and made the defence stronger and now Dier doesn’t have to go back in there, which will keep him happy.

The only strange thing was seeing Sissoko in the starting XI, head of the diamond. Some say he shone there, even going as far as giving him top score for the team, while others actually watched the game.

Running about is classed too highly these days.

The Frenchman buggered up a few good breaks and chances not least a glorious goal scoring opportunity from a Trippier cross. Luckily it wasn’t costly as it might have been in say August.

But this is September and Harry has started scoring. Two for England and now two for Spurs. The first really highlighted the bizarre August thing. I mean how many really good opportunities didn’t go in for Kane during the first month of the season and then September comes round and he opens his club account from a cross.

His one hundredth for the club, his one hundred and first came seconds into the second half and probably did most to highlight the ineptness of the hosts. Eriksen in acres of space played the ball to Kane who was in acres of space, he played it wide to Davies who was in acres of space and his cross found Kane all on his lonesome in the box. It’s not like he even had to bust a gut to get in there, just an angle and the defence left him all alone… almost like forget the month had changed.

That was it, well in reality it was over before that when Eriksen scored the second but this being Spurs you automatically think “need that third”.

That Eriksen goal was again made by Everton giving too much space to too good a player to turn it down. Another piece of good play from Davies who got forward more in this game, thanks to that formation.

Trippier looked happier with things as well. I had thought the other defensive new boy Aurier might have played but wonder if Pochettino is doing the opposite of last year, Trippier for the league and the other bloke for the Champions League.

The only real chance that came Everton’s way was a gift from Hugo after some England style passing about in defence. Luckily they weren’t good enough to accept the gift.

One other thing that returned was the head scratching substitutions. When Harry came off, why bring on Son and leave Llorente on the bench? I mean give him a little run out, you know what Son can do. Strange…

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