Aston Villa (Home) 19.10.2025

Going into the match without the knee injury victim Destiny Udogie and the last-minute withdrawal of Cristian Romero in the warm-up with an abductor muscle concern, it was less than an ideal preparation.  Without a number of our attacking available, Thomas Frank went with Tel leading the line and Xavi, Mo and Wilson behind him, with Rodrigo and Joao as the defensive midfielders.  Kevin Danso came in for Romero in a defence that otherwise was familiar. 

As the rain fell down, Spurs pressed hard and some hesitant passing around at the back saw Mathys Tel nick the ball off Konsa and then played it of Cash to win a corner.  It was cleared at the near post, but Mohammed Kudus picked up the ball on the left wing and put a deep cross in.  Joao Palhinha won a header at the far post to knock it back across, where Rodrigo Bentancur stole in to fire it into the net from just outside the six-yard box to put us ahead in the fifth minute.  It was a great start and Portuguese midfielder again proved his value to the team with a towering header to provide the assist for Bentancur to arrive at the right time to open the scoring.

Things were looking even better when a magnificent diagonal ball was played by Micky van de Ven to Mo on the left,  He chested the ball down under challenge by Digne, then fired it low under Martinez into the opposite bottom corner from inside the area with seven minutes gone.  However, the linesman’s raised flag was enough to wipe the goal out.  Micky picked up a deserved yellow card for a late tackle on Rogers, which would have been fine if the referee had shown some consistency in dealing with similar challenges the same way when they were inflicted on Tottenham players.

Cash put a 20 yard effort wide when Spurs failed to clear the ball properly and then Pedro Porro’s diagonal ball to Wilson Odobert gave the French winger the opportunity to run at Cash, cutting inside into the box to look for the far corner, but Martinez got down to to the low shot.  He fumbled the ball, but managed to grab it at the second attempt.

Guglielmo Vicario had down well to fist out a dangerous cross, but when Villa’s next attack was stopped by some good tracking back and a slide tackle from Xavi Simons, the ball was played across the pitch and it was all a bit untidy before the ball came to Rogers, 25 yards out and he hit a dipping shot that went over Vic’s dive to level things up in the 37th minute.  There hadn’t been too much threat on the Spurs goal to that point and it took a goal out of the blue to breach it.

Micky had a good chance from Odobert’s cross just before half-time, but he wasn’t able to wrap his neck around it enough to keep it from going over, with both teams trailing off to the dressing rooms in the rain a couple of minutes later.  It hadn’t been a half of great quality with a lot of the play being un-co-ordinated making it a less than easy watch.

The second half started with Kevin Danso clearing the ball out of the Spurs area and Digne challenging him late.  The Villa man needed extensive treatment for what turned out to be a nasty gash on his ankle, as he was caught by Danso’s follow-through, but no blame could be attached to the Tottenham defender.  Eight minutes into the second half, a Danso long throw caused confusion in the area, with a defensive header hitting on of their own players directing the ball down in front of Wilson, who hit a shot at goal that struck Konsa.  There were appeals for handball but despite the defender moving his hand to the ball, proximity and the fact that his hands were in front of his chest ruled out the chance of a penalty being awarded. 

Kudus did well on the wing and his ball in was worked to Palhinha, whose shot was pushed around the post in dramatic fashion by the keeper.  Micky showed some great defending with Malen coming into the left side of the box and his challenge was enough to make the opposition forward shoot into the side-netting, although the away fans thought it was in.  Richarlison replaced Mathys Tel and Villa made a couple of substitutions which was followed by a yellow card for Danso after play resumed, when he pulled back Rogers in midfield.  When Spurs cleared an attack, the ball was spread wide to the right, where Digne did well to stretch to reach it and flick it behind him to sub Buendia.  He came inside as just as he reached the D curled a left foot shot that found the bottom right hand corner of Vicario’s goal.  The Spurs keeper was adamant that Rogers had been in his way while standing in an offside position and Kevin slipping when he might have been able top block it didn’t help, but the ref allowed it as Rogers had been onside when the shot left the player’s foot and Spurs were behind with 14 minutes to play.

Xavi and Odobert made way for Randal Kolo Muani to come on (not for his debut Paul Coyte, but his Premier League debut … other competitions are available) along with Lucas Bergvall.  Unfortunately, Lucas didn’t make a lot of impact as he was trying to close down, but got played around.  Then Bentancur and Spence went off with Pape Matar Sarr and Brennan Johnson coming off the bench, with the Welshman taking the left back slot !  He had a chance when Kudus cross was headed to the far post, but with the ball bouncing high, he tried to take his shot first time and it went way wide.  We had a couple of chances to counter-attack, but passes from Porro and Kudus failed to find their targets as the Villa defence popped up in the right place to cut them out. The best chance fell to Kolo Muani, who completely missed his kick when Palhinha headed the ball down to the striker.  It could have been worse as Villa looked to hit us on the break at the end and only a fine last ditch tackle prevented Watkins when he was clean through.

Tottenham’s play at home has been typified by a huge gap in the area where midfielders usually operate.  There are the defenders and the defensive midfielders and then there are the forward, with a chasm of about 50 yards with no white shirt there.  This means that when the ball is played long and won by an opposition defender, if it drops in this area, there is no Spurs player there to collect it.  It also means that there is this disconnect between the backs and the forwards, which, if there are not Tottenham players coming forward to fill the space, means there is little opportunity to work the ball through midfield.  Without a defined number 10, it makes it more difficult to move the ball through the middle of the pitch and thus there is more reliance on using the width provided by the wingers.  Giving up that space sometimes allows the other side to maintain pressure, as the ball keeps coming back and that is what happened with the second goal, although both came as a result of a shot form outside the box, without sufficient pressure on the goal-scorer.

It seems that a lot of the time we have an opportunity to go close to the top we fail to grasp the opportunity.  Going back to 1995 when we could have gone second with a win over Bolton Wanderers at home and Nayim was shown on the big screen as he was attending the game and everyone cheered, distracting the players allowing the visitors to equalise.  This performance was lacking in cohesion and while there has been an international break, so less time for the players to work together, there is still work to do in working on the attacking partnerships and determining who will play that 10 role to create the defence splitting openings, with Porro being the only one to play an astute pass inside the full back today.  That is unlikely to happen before Wednesday’s match in Monaco, but it is a match we need to get something out of.

• Rodrigo Bentancur’s goal was Tottenham’s 300th against Aston Villa in competitive matches.