at the new stadium.
White Hart Lane wasn’t like this in Chris Hughton’s day, so has Chris, he wasn’t brought up to play dullard football like he had his Briton side play and no, they weren’t unlucky in losing, they got what they deserved.
Who didn’t see this coming? A visiting side who hadn’t scored in their last six league games, three points off the drop zone, what else were they going to do but flat back ten it. Try and get away with at least a point.
And they very nearly did, as Spurs went through their usual routine when facing such a side. A routine of struggle.
Defenders getting in front of everything and when they didn’t the ball hitting the woodwork or the keeper doing his best Tim Krul impersonation. That or the ball going high, wide and handsome. Interspersed with a lot of sideways and backwards passing and too many touches… far too many touches.
All those extra touches meant everything was slow… to slow. It needed more pace… some pace… in passing, not running. One touch, triangles and if you’re gonna cross it stop hitting inept crosses.
So everyone was camped in the Brighton half, bar Hugo, though I bet he was tempted.
Brighton were helped along the way by the inept officiating. The ref seemed to be happy to go along with their time wasting, which started pretty much from the off right up until two minutes before the 90. In such situations there should be two clocks used so teams that suddenly find themselves behind can’t benefit from the time they wasted being added on.
The ref also indulged their fouling, specifically Andone, who could have seen a number of yellow cards other than the one he got before his departure just after the hour.
Twenty minutes later and the game changer was introduced. Yes, Vincent Janssen stepped onto a pitch, during a game, wearing a Spurs shirt. I thought he was gonna get a goal, but the ball was just stabbed away from him.
Two minutes before the end Llorente and Janssen occupied some defenders when Eriksen received the ball from Dele, turned, saw some space and fired in the relief.
Typically what followed was the pundits lamenting poor Brighton. Brighton who deserved nothing got nothing. They might as well have come out and tried to play for all the good flat back tenning it did for them.
Third is now definitely in Spurs hands, with three games to go…