Second Best Tottenham Ride Their Luck Again

Executive decisions and not on-field talent is the chief barrier to get a side like Tottenham to become champions.  For the last four years pundits have cited Tottenham has a team who has a shot at winning the Premier League title but the trophy cabinet contains only cups gains from mickey mouse pre-season friendlies.   The stuff of champions is not in celebrating the small awards or the nonsense awards, it is achieving that which only the best can achieve and that the majority miss out on.  Spurs 2-2 draw on Saturday does not signal a changing of the guard but for the second time benefiting from the introduction of Video Assisted Refereeing system or the system that is now called "VAR".

After Manchester City scored what seemed like a fifth and decisive goal in injury time of their Champions League quarter-final against Tottenham, it was the introduction of VAR which caught an offside.  In the defense of VAR on that day, Spurs fans would have seen their team lose on what video would have revealed later was an offside.  Yet on Saturday it was not VAR which was the controversy as Manchester City again had a game winning goal chalked off in the dying minutes of the game.  This time it was the new handball rule which meant VAR being unfairly criticized for reversing and taking away Manchester City's win.  

Even the players on the field did not see the incident where the ball ricocheted between a Spurs and Man City player and only on video was it discernable that as the ball headed towards to the Manchester City striker, that it had grazed the elbow of a Manchester City player as the ball went between the two contesting players.  It was so slight that even the TV commentators missed the ball touching the arm and so VAR made the right call - but in the spirit of the game and what handball used to mean, the new rules on handball served to generate a feeling of angst about the new handball rule. The pundits agreed that this is not the way a game should be decided but the law is the law and VAR did its job.  It also has made Tottenham fans ecstatic, so much so the travelling Tottenham fans at the Etihad Stadium were singing about VAR.

The real facts are far more damning.  Spurs halted Manchester City's 14 successive victories, 13 of which helped them inch past Liverpool to win the Premier League title by just 1 point.  Had this game been the last game of the season and Spurs or more to the point the use of VAR had led to City dropping points and therefore losing the title to Liverpool by 2 points, the outrage would have been immense - for who wants to see a team that out-shot their opponents with 30 shots for Manchester City compared to just 3 shots from Tottenham (and one was a poor attempt to lob the Manchester City goalkeeper from the halfway line by Harry Kane), the other two were goals.

The good news for Tottenham is that their first goal was from Erik Lamela who seems to finally be delivering the promise of his immense gifts as a footballer - this year Lamela has learned to tackle and he is showing a more polished and ruthless playing style that seems to have abandoned his poor habit of feigning fouls and trying to win penalties by diving.  The bad news for Tottenham is that Mauricio Pochettino was using very strange tactics, especially playing three rather than two holding midfielders.  While new recruit Giovanni Lo Celso got his Tottenham debut at the end, it was as if criticism of keeping Christian Eriksen on the subs bench last week had got Pochettino to pencil the weak formation he used against Aston Villa to prove that it was the system rather than Eriksen's ability which turned the game around.

As soon as he had removed one of those defensive midfielders, Spurs saw immediate payback in the form of bringing on Lucas Moura after 55 minutes trailing 2-1.  Moura trotted the 17 seconds it took to join in a rare Tottenham corner and a further two seconds to make the run where he out-jumped the City defense to head the ball to level the game.  That jump was incredoulous only because Lucas Moura is short for a player at 5ft 8" in height, but what he lacks in height, he makes up for in heart.

The cracks in Tottenham's credibility as a title contender were all clear for everyone to see.  Had Spurs goakeeper Lloris not been on top form,  Manchester City could have easily repeated their 5-0 demolition job of West Ham the week before.  The best news for Tottenham came when Pep substituted his legendary striker Sergio Arguero, a substitution which Arguero was very upset about.  He should have been upset because he was at the top of his game and it was only a question of when and not if he would claim himself a decisive 3rd City goal.  His altercation with his manager was ugly and not something Pep was happy about.  Yet when the City bench thought that his replacement Jesus had scored, Argeuro came of the bench to hug his manager, as if to say "sorry boss for me doubting your decision".  No sooner had the embrace finished, referee Micheal Oliver remained stationery in the Tottenham penalty area waiting for a VAR decision.

The fans booed and could not believe that lightning had struck twice with VAR.  They could not believe that what they thought was a very deserving 3-2 win had become a dissatisfying 2-2 draw and left bewildered how City dropped points where they were head and shoulders well above the quality of their opponents.  That bewilderment extended to the Tottenham chairman who cut a terse and tense expression rather than as a celebrating Chairman of the club.  Levy could see that Tottenham were at best second best on Saturday and just how far they remain behind the League champions.  Maybe he was also chewing on the reality that European clubs will be swooping in like vultures trying to pry away two or three of his best players - players he is left in jam with because their agents have probably instructed them not to renew their contracts and let their contracts expire by next summer - at which time they will all become free agents - and Tottenham collect nothing though under current valuations, those three players would have fetched a total $200 million.

We know what happened to Leeds United when they did not balance their books, this powerhouse fell from grace and now ply their footballing trade in a lesser division, but while today was lucky for Tottenham that VAR is now officially in use, the damning under current of the club is concerning and it looked like Daniel Levy now knows that, even though he should be celebrating what was a most unlikely gain of a point against the team they denied a shot at the Champions League title.