Newcash United (Home) 23.10.2022

No, not comments about the Spurs team for once, although our performance didn’t merit much from this match, but the words relate to the way the main match official went about his business in this game.  Whoever thought it was a good idea to let this person be a referee, let alone one in a top flight match, needs to be thrown out of football, as they are a very poor judge of what is needed to control a Premier League match.  If you can’t do something as simple as count to six, which is the number of seconds a goalkeeper has to release the ball after they have it in their control, then you don’t just need re-training in the laws of the game, but you need to learn some basic numeracy skills.  Then maybe I am being a bit harsh and he is unable to count to 11.

I am not even going to mention his name, as he deserves no acknowledgement of his existence and while he has crossed the world from Australia, it is a sad indictment of the level of refereeing in this country if he is ahead of others who are coming through the FA’s training.  It wasn’t his fault that Spurs lost the game, but his contribution to Newcash winning three points was vital.

Entering the match without Romero and Hojbjerg, who had ‘minor injuries’, it wasn’t so much rotation as having circumstances forced upon us.  Royal came back in at right wing back, Skipp replaced Hojbjerg, Lenglet was picked at left centre-back instead of Davies and Sanchez took Romero’s position.  An almost wholesale shuffling of the defence didn’t seem to be the best thing after Wednesday’s loss at Old Trafford.

Things started brightly with Son Heung-Min shooting on sight, making Pope save and firing just wide before hitting another shot too high.  When Harry Kane slid Son into the box, he tried to dink the ball over Pope who came out to dive at his feet, but the keeper got something on it and the ball was hacked away from in front of the goal.  And then it all started going wrong.

A lack of options to pass the ball out from the back because of lack of movement in front of the defenders led to mis-placed passes.  Dier knocked a pass back to Lloris, but it was way too hard and the Spurs defender was fortunate to see the ball go past Lloris and past his post with the damage only being a corner.  Spurs were still moving the ball forward, with Skipp’s pass to Sessegnon bringing a block to his shot that would have been on target and Son’s corner was flapped at by Pope and Bentancur and Dier both hit shots at goal that were blocked as the ball pin-balled around the area.  Kane then had a low shot blocked by Pope’s out-stretched foot after good work by Bentancur won the ball to send him away, but then a through ball was chased by Wilson and Lloris came out of his area to clear it waist high just outside the box, but it went straight past the Newcash striker who ran straight into him.  There was confusion in the mind of the man in pink, who didn’t know what was going on, but the ball ran loose and Wilson knocked it into the goal from 30 yards out over Dier’s head.  Chaos reigned as Spurs players remonstrated with the PGMOL’s appointment, who booked Bentancur while VAR reviewed and reviewed and reviewed it until they decided that there had been nothing wrong with clattering the player who got to the ball first.  It was a joke that all the officials involved took so long to make a decision that they threw a handball review into just for fun. 

As has been the case in recent matches, our difficulty in getting the ball out from the back caused as more difficulty as we went 0-2 behind.  It was five minutes before half-time and Hugo tried to play the ball left to Sessegnon on the wing, but it didn’t get there as Longstaff cut it out.  It ran to Almiron, who ran at goal from the right past Lenglet and from a tight angle beat Lloris with a shot across him to double the lead.  It is a tactic that Conte wants to develop to get the opposition to commit themselves and leave space for Spurs to play in, but it relies on players being able to deliver the ball and players being able to receive the pass.  Too often today that didn’t happen and while it was the defenders and the keeper who took the stick (rightly in some instances), it was the players ahead of them who were not making themselves available.

Into added time Lenglet got forward and fired a shot in at goal, but it was blocked and then during half-time the interview with two members of the Proud Lilywhites got absolutely soaked as the heavens opened, tipping stair-rod rain, hail, thunder and lightning on the THS.  The weather was in keeping with the stormy relationship some fans have with the team, as boos accompanied them off the field at the break.

The rain continued into the second half, with Spurs attacking the South Stand, but it was Newcash who made the quicker start, with Spurs blocking a succession of efforts inside the box before it went out for a corner that Almiron ended up shanking wildly high and the ball was cleared.  Royal did well to block an effort from Joelinton on their left which brought calls for a penalty for handball, but then Newcash were in the match official’s face the whole game for everything … even throw-ins !  I thought that was something else that officials were supposed to be tough on, but this one wasn’t tough on anything unless it had a white shirt on.  The away team got closer to a goal when Schar drove a low shot in that Lloris got down well to block and then the ball was booted away before any further damage could be inflicted.

The Spurs scored.  It was the 54th minute when Spurs won a corner and Son put it high to the near post, where Lenglet beat three players to the header and it slid of his head across goal where Trippier was all over Kane’s back but didn’t do it effectively enough to stop Harry stooping to head over the line at the far post from a yard out.  It was a lifeline that we needed to make the most of and after VAR tried to find a reason to disallow it, claiming there was an offside in there somewhere, it was given and we were back in the game.

Sessegnon lost the ball and when Almiron got away from him he dragged him back, getting a yellow card for it, but when Guimaraes went in on Son two footed and recklessly, the match officials decided it was only a free-kick, while it should have been something VAR looked at.  Skipp got booked when he tackled Guimaraes with nothing like as bad a tackle and Wilson finally got shown a yellow card for sticking his leg out as Lloris kicked the ball from his hands.  The Newcash number 9 had already pulled Hugo back earlier in the game as he looked to release the ball quickly and on numerous occasions had thrown/kicked the ball away and had stood in front of the ball after the match official had told him to get back 10 yards.  It is hard to reconcile how referees expect respect from players when they allow this sort of behaviour to continue.  The standard of officiating is dropping so low, mainly brought on by relying on VAR to make decisions for them that they are no longer capable of making their own.

Harry held the ball and waited for players to be drawn to him before slipping the ball to his left to Perisic, just inside the box, to shoot, but his low side-foot lacked power and although it looked as though it might get through Pope’s legs, it didn’t have enough pace to do so before he grabbed the ball, flopped on it and spent another half an hour to release it.

That was 20 minutes from the end and we really didn’t create much after that as the game petered out with Newcash happy to take forever taking a throw-in, getting players to lay down whenever they could and Spurs unable to make much of the play when they had the ball.  As they tried to force the game, it led to over-hit passes or poor control that turned possession over.

It wasn’t so much that Newcash beat us, but we handed them the points.  Two goals put on a plate for them and aside from that, they didn’t have many chances, but they were happy enough to kick our players and then go down whenever they were touched to break up play and use up minutes of the game that the naïve and gullible match officials failed to clamp down on.  The so-called toughening up on time-wasting by the FA is just a waste of time.  I don’t go to football to see players kicking the goal-post or so-called tough players going to ground at the slightest touch.  Or at the very least could the officials be able to add on the correct amount of time for stoppages.  It’s expensive enough as it is, let alone during these tough times and there appears to be little effort put in by the man in the middle to ensure we are getting any sort of value for money. I’m not talking about Spurs winning all the time, but is 90 minutes of football too much to ask for ?  If you asked the Barcodes who follow their team when they are doing well, I am sure you will hear a different response. 

The loudmouth at Northumberland Park station was proclaiming that it was all crap and the last two managerial appointments had been dinosaurs.  “Get Poch back.  That was progressive football,” he said to anyone willing to listen.  But it is all well and good wanting the top managers, but would they come to Tottenham you have to ask.   When Conte came in, did many think we would be in the Champions League ?  Did many reckon we would be third in the table after 11 games ?  Two games lost in a week and TalkSport are calling for Conte’s head.  And if he goes, who will we get ?  Poch back ?  That ended sadly last time and I wouldn’t wish it on him again.

What people don’t realise is that this isn’t the same team that Poch had.  We haven’t got an Eriksen.  We haven’t got a Walker or a Rose.  And it’s not easy to get those sort of replacements.  We’ve seen players that we have been in for who have chosen to go elsewhere and after the last couple of years, we need a bit of stability rather than another new manager.

It’s not great losing and losing our long home unbeaten record, but losing is part of the game and however you might not like it, there isn’t a manager in the world who can win them all.  There’s a lot of learning to be done by both manager and players to regain some consistency in our play, but without key players that makes it more difficult.  Not every club has the resources of Newcash (without being xenophobic  … it’s a fact).

Gary Baldwin

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