Spurs Away Wembley Lost 3 – 1

Posted on December 6, 2018 by John Smith

1. It’s been quite a couple of weeks for Kelvin Davies: promoted from the obscurity of goalkeeping expert to a place on the coaching bench behind Mark Hughes, and then in the blink of an eyelid, leading the team out at Wembley, albeit a Wembley visit in a routine away game at Tottenham. He switched the team around, being forced by Lemina’s suspension and Obefemi’s injury, but also changing to a flat back four, and maybe his pre-match talk included looking out for Son and Eriksen as attacking midfielders and keeping an eye on Kane who scored three in this fixture last season. Maybe… but it didn’t stop Son hitting the post after three minutes and Kane converting a corner on ten, with Yoshida deciding ball-watching was a better ploy than clearing the damned thing. Saints came so, so close to getting back on terms when Lloris touched Højbjerg’s shot onto the post with Armstrong, who was offside anyway, unable to dispatch the rebound. Spurs put McCarthy under a lot of pressure at the start of the second half and they were eventually rewarded when Moura da Silva’s second effort strike found the net. That was probably enough to beat Southampton, but a third goal not long afterwards truly killed them off; poor full back play by Targett let Kane cross for Son Heung-Min to score easily. But for all their defensive lapses, Saints had their moments in the match and struck the woodwork again, this time via Redmond, and saw Lloris deny Ward-Prowse on the follow up to another Højbjerg shot. With time rapidly running out, they kept going close, with the goal frame once more rattled (a Yoshie header) and Lloris just about keeping out Austin before eventually Austin got clear and finally managed to get his team on the scoreboard – not that all of us saw it, with the clock ticking towards 10 o’clock. Remember when evening games used to kick off at 7:30 and you didn’t have to rush to get the last train home? So no points for Kelvin during his period in charge, but he’s not the first to suffer that fate: check out the Dean Wilkins episode as an extreme example.
   LSSC Man of the Match: Pierre-Emile Højbjerg, desperately unlucky not to score.