West Ham United London (Home) 07.12.2023

A fifth game when Spurs have scored first and a fifth game without a win has left the critics slamming Ange Postecoglou after praising him in our first ten matches after this latest defeat by two goals to one by West ham United London at the THS.  In truth, the game should have been sewn up in the first half, when The Irons showed no interest in getting forward, but were pulled around by some intricate Spurs football, which failed to bring more than the single goal.  And that one goal lead is always a dodgy one, as one bit of luck and the advantage is gone.  Two bits of luck and the game is lost.  And that’s what West Ham had, as they rarely threatened for the majority of the match. 

Spurs once again started brightly, which didn’t match the rain that was falling for quite a while before and during the match.  Winning an early corner, which didn’t create an effort on goal, Spurs were winning the ball with ease and knocking it around to open the West Ham midfield up, even though they were packing plenty of men back behind the ball.  Dejan Kulusevski and Porro were enjoying a lot of possession down the right and when Pedro put in a cross that got cut out, Spurs had a corner on their right wing.  Porro took it and played it into the middle of the penalty box.  Cristian Romero jumped higher than everyone and got his head to it and it floated towards the far post.  It looked fairly innocuous, but Fabianski was nowhere and the ball drifted into the top corner of the net.  In view of our recent record, we wondered if the goal had come to early and whether we could go on from there.  We were later to find out.    

There had been an incident when one of the West Ham players handled the ball to stop Spurs progressing, but when Kulusevski did the same, Ward-Prowse went after the referee to book him.  Wasn’t there an edict that players trying to get others booked would receive a yellow card ?  That seems to have gone the same way as goalkeepers holding onto the ball for more than six seconds and the offence of obstruction.  

When The Irons got forward, they were invariably offside and in contrast, Spurs were creating chances but not taking them.  Johnson had a shot blocked and Son finished weakly and poorly by shooting straight at Fabianski.  Giovani Lo Celso put a first-time effort over the bar, with Porro driving a rising shot too high before Gio tested the keeper with a shot from the edge of the box.  Sonny then received the ball in the box from Lo Celso, turned and fired a tame shot at the goalie, but when Gio’s cross was punched out weakly to Dejan, his shot hit Emerson and then Yves Bissouma got onto the ball but put it over the bar from outside the box.  It was a minute before half-time before The Irons had a chance as Kudus held off Ben Davies and crossed for Paqueta to throw himself low, only to put it ten yards wide.  There were two chances for Spurs in added time, with Johnson putting a shot that lacked power straight at Fabianski and then the closest Tottenham came to a second goal was when Lo Celso drove down the left and looked for a ball across the box.  It was cut out by Zouma, but the ball cannoned away off the top of the post for a corner.

So, the first half ended as much of the preceding 48 minutes, with Spurs on the attack, but little did we know that was all to change.  

Not straight away, as another corner won early in the half put the pressure on the West Ham goal and VAR made their first intervention into the match when Johnson had a header that hit Coufal on the arm at close range so it didn’t take long to declare no penalty.  The referee had a match in which he showed little consistency, giving The Irons free-kicks for the slightest of touches, while similar offences the other way went unpunished.  And Spurs went from the denial of a penalty to being pulled back level within a minute.  The visitors broke forward and Kudus had a shot that was blocked by Romero, then bounced off Davies into the box where Bowen blasted it high to Vicario’s right to make it 1-1.  Almost the first shot that they had on target and it ended up in our goal.

It seemed to buck up their ideas, with Paqueta having a shot that Vic dealt with without fuss, being forced into action again when a corner was cleared back to Ward-Prowse, who tried to beat him at his near post, but Venom managed to put the ball behind for another corner.  Guglielmo then made a truly outstanding save when the corner was played back in and Soucek got on the end of it to volley towards the keeper’s top left hand corner.  Vic threw a hand up to push it over the bar showing great reflexes and a strong hand, not knowing that the offside flag would be raised by the linesman after the event.

Ange brought on Skipp for Lo Celso and Richarlison for Hojbjerg, as he tried to shake things up, but Spurs had stopped the movement they showed in the first half, with West Ham clamping down on Kulusevski with two men as the chances dried up for us.  The game was stop/start thanks to the Irons non-stop injuries, with players going down and Fabianski holding his head when there was a bunch of players going for a free kick played into their box, but despite the referee warning him three times about time-wasting, he did nothing to stop him.  With 20 minutes left Porro took a corner on our right and when it was recycled to him, his deep cross to the far post was just a little too long and Richarlison had to stretch for it, but put it a foot wide of the goal in what was our best chance of the half.

Porro was becoming our most dangerous player, hitting a drive to the near post that Fabianski pushed around his post, but again, it led to a goal in our net.  Udogie played a short back-pass that Bowen challenged for, as Vicario dived out low on the ground to punch out, only finding Ward-Prowse on the edge of the box.  He somehow managed to miss an open goal by hitting the post and luck was against us again as it could have gone anywhere, but bounced back into the path of the same player who couldn’t miss from five yards out.

Davies tried to push Spurs forward and found Johnson with a pass as he ran into the Irons’ half, but the striker’s shot went wide, then Porro again did well to get a cross in to the near post, but the keeper got there just before Bryan Gil, who had replaced Biss when Pape Matar Sarr came on for Johnson.  Vicario was alert again when there was a corner played to the near post and he pushed the ball up before getting to it again with his fist as it looked as though it might drop into the net under the bar.

Out final ball hadn’t been great all night and in the second half, when we did create space to shoot, our finishing was poor, with Sarr the latest to miss when he hit the ball over from 20 yards out.  The end part of the game was little frantic.  Veliz was thrown on but without much effect, Porro hit the wall with a free-kick that came off Zouma’s arm, but it was high on his shoulder, so VAR said there was no handball.  Kulusevski made one last run down the right that saw Paqueta throw himself into the Swede and the ref gave a free-kick to them with Kulusevski off the field on the ground having been given a hand in the face.  The final whistle went as soon as they took the free-kick and Dejan raced half the length of the pitch to vehemently question why nothing had been done about the West Ham man’s challenge and had to be dragged away before the ref did anything more after showing him the yellow card.

The turnaround in form had been directly linked to the missing players from our side.  West Ham were not better than us on the night, they just had more luck.  Playing the way we do, the absence of van de Ven is felt all the more and without Maddison, there is a falling back on our age old problem of not being able to break down teams who pack ten or eleven men behind the ball.  People in the crowd around me were urging the ball to be thumped forward and for players to shoot with a wall of bodies in front of them, but the margins of success in those tactics are slim and by working the ball around to take opposition players out of the game is the way Ange want the team to play.  It is high rick, but the benefits are great if it come off.  If it doesn’t then we will get stung.  Fans must be aware that this style paid off at the beginning of the season and they were all behind it then, but now a few results go the wrong way and we are supposed to run out and play like The Irons did tonight.  It is frustrating some times, for sure, but it isn’t going to change, so we have to stick with the manager and the team.

It was noticeable tonight that the atmosphere that accompanied the Chelsea match was missing and while the laughable chant of “Champions of Europe” came from the away end, there was little encouragement from the Tottenham sections.

We need to get behind the team on Sunday, as a loss to Newcash will allow them to creep up on us like Man U and West Ham are doing.

The Polyphant

• Tottenham scored for the 27th consecutive league match.
• Spurs lost a fifth game after leading setting a Premier League record.