The Day Spurs Were Not Spursy - But Swansea Became Swansy

For 87 minutes of the game, the high position and high press game of Tottenham had yielded nothing and then the Swansea management wanted to substitute the Swansea keeper Fabianski.  A few minutes early the game was delayed for 7 minutes due to a bad injury to the goalkeeper, but Fabianksi refused to go off and angrily gestured to the Swansea bench that he could continue in goal with just a few more minutes left on the game.

Instead of listening to medical advise Fabianksi remained on the pitch and he remained on, and if Fabianski had this decision as a do-over, he should have heeded the trainers advice.   Instead he stayed on and watch three Spurs goals flash by literally in minutes of each other.

The prospect of Spurs losing this game after 87 minutes suddenly had every Spurs fan calculating if a loss to Swansea would put their Top 4 hopes in jeopardy.  The answer would be that it would. That Spurs scored three times in about four minutes while crossing into injury time was a complete turn of events. 

Upto then I had spent 1 hour 30 minutes on a treadmill regretting that I had chosen a losing moment to exercise - and the amount of chances that went begging in the game, a treadmill was not the best place to be.  In the last few minutes it became the best place to be, as I notched up the incline to four times higher than my normal pace to Level 6. 

For Spurs this opened up a gap on the chasing pack of Liverpool,  Manchester City, Arsenal and Manchester United.  A loss today could have sucked Spurs back into the dogfight for Champions League places.  So long as they don't drop silly points away to Watford and then home to Bournemouth - a Top Four place is there for the taking.

What Tottenham proved today is that their strict physical training regiment means that they can outlast those teams who are not trained to exacting standards.  Chelsea's win against Manchester City means that they put one hand closer to the title, but Tottenham have an outside hope for the title and a chance on April 22nd to stop Chelsea's advance for a double.

It was perplexing watching a match where Spurs had at times 85% of the possession and still trail in the game by a score of 0-1.  In the end the Swansea collapse enables Spurs to open a 5pt gap on Liverpool and more importantly a 7pt gap on Manchester City.  What we learned today that Spurs reputation earned over many years of losing games they should have won, came to a dead stop at the Liberty Stadium in Wales.

The name given to that poor reputation for Spurs was being "Spursy" but there was nothing Spursy in the end though for 87 minutes it did look that way- and by the time it was over Swansea supporters either had the look of shock or had already left the ground in disgust.  Swansea played more like a Spursy side today and it was so damaging to their hopes of staying up, that I found a new name to describe Swansea's result today - I have called it being a bit Swansy.