FROM TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR STADIUM – A single Erling Haaland goal proved to be the narrow margin of victory for Manchester City against Tottenham Hotspur on Wednesday night.
“They’re going to try and play expansively,” Ange Postecoglou warned pre-match, “and we are going to try and do the same.” Both teams lived up to their billing, laying the foundations for a typically entertaining duel between two bold – and chronically flawed – outfits.
How Haaland was the only player to find the net from an enjoyably back-and-forth contest peppered with 23 combined shots, will remain a mystery.
How the game unfolded
Pep Guardiola turned to the most energetic 11 players he had available, lining up with two wingers in the form of Jeremy Doku and Savinho, whose first (and second and third) intention was to drive to the byline and fire a cutback into the box. Both fleet-footed forwards beat their opposite full-backs in the 12 minutes which came before Haaland’s opening goal.
At the end of a fluid move which began deep inside City’s half, the maroon-clad visitors swept diagonally across the pitch, presenting the ball at the feet of Doku whose cross deflected kindly for Haaland to gobble up a tap-in.
Tottenham had started brightly, buoyed by three consecutive wins, and retained a slightly frenzied zeal after falling behind. But City took on an air of control that has been so distinctly lacking this season, racking up a glut of chances which Haaland and Savinho conspired to squander between them. Guglielmo Vicario’s reflexes and the visitors’ collective waywardness were responsible for the fortuitously slender 1-0 deficit at the interval. An unimpressed crowd still greeted the half-time interval with a squall of boos.
The subdued atmosphere on a brisk night in north London began to crackle again as Pedro Porro found room in the final third to attack after an opening 45 minutes spent almost entirely bumbling around in Doku’s slipstream.
Postecoglou capitalised upon the dramatic shift in momentum – now it was Tottenham’s turn to marvel at the under-used scoreboard – with a quadruple substitution. Within seconds of their arrival, Djed Spence teed up Pape Sarr, his fellow substitute, for a clear sight of goal which he skewed well wide.
Son Heung-min, another second-half introduction, had a low fizzing effort pawed away by Ederson late on as Spurs pushed in search of a winner which their showing after the break arguably warranted.
After a painfully protracted VAR review eventually decided that Haaland had clearly handled the ball before stuffing it in the net in second-half stoppage time, Sarr found time to head wide ten yards out from Ederson’s charmed goal.
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“Obviously, we will miss him,” Guardiola sighed after watching his City side register just two shots on target against Liverpool without their talismanic forward last weekend – the club’s lowest tally in a Premier League game for 11 months. Haaland only needed 12 minutes to test Vicario twice himself on Wednesday, finding a way past the Italian with his second effort.
The No 9’s return sent a ripple of renewed positivity through a fanbase which needs a boost, but few would have been as thrilled as Jeremy Doku. The slippery Belgian twisted Trent Alexander-Arnold inside out and back to front last Sunday but had no one to cross to. Haaland soon fixed that – even if he missed most of those chances.
It’s been several long, hard months since Postecoglou has been treated to the luxury of being able to rotate his squad. He might not be tempted to do it again in the near future.
Wilson Odobert made his first start since September while Son Heung-min watched the first half from the bench. Dejan Kulusevski was named among the substitutes for the just the second time since August, but Spurs missed Djed Spence most of all.
Doku had his way with right-back Pedro Porro, and Destiny Udogie didn’t fare much better on the opposite flank. Tottenham’s returning Italian was left on his knees, two clasped hands away from assuming a prayer position, by one of Savinho’s body swerves. Udogie was so frequently bamboozled he changed his boots ten minutes before the half-time whistle. It didn’t help much.
The sight of Spence getting stripped on the hour mark sparked one of the loudest cheers of the night. The buccaneering full-back was part of a quadruple substitution with 25 minutes remaining which also included Kulusevski, Son and Pape Sarr. Three of the four arrivals either created or had a shot on goal during their limited involvement – hinting at the impact that they could have enjoyed had Postecoglou deployed his strongest lineup from the outset.
Haaland’s touch count has been fetishised beyond all recognition – but even the minimalistic Norwegian would have blushed at Mathys Tel’s sparse interaction with the ball in midweek. Tottenham’s winter transfer coup took his only shot in the sixth minute and finished the game with just five attempts at a pass.
Up against a City team that have hardly been defensively resilient – or even flirted with the idea – Tel barely featured, let alone posed a threat.
It’s pertinent to note that Tel is still a teenager bravely wading through his first month in a foreign country with a team that – until very recently – had been unmistakably in free fall. However, he may need to have more than 12 touches going forward.
“We have handled teams who [mark] man-to-man really well,” Guardiola insisted this week, flatly ignoring the catalogue of evidence which points to the contrary. This calendar year alone, Paris Saint-Germain’s front-foot press turned City’s backline into a skittish husk. Guardiola was so concerned about his side’s inability to play out from the back against Chelsea that he bypassed the build-up entirely, instead adopting an aerial approach.
Tottenham bounded around the final third with the jittery energy of an over-caffeinated child, leaving vast swathes of space for City to burst into once that first wave of pressure was broken.
Rather than intricate passing schemes, City found their way through Tottenham’s press with the one quality Guardiola has come to value more than any other; dribbling. Omar Marmoush received a straight pass directly from Ederson, shimming away from centre-back Kevin Danso to kick-start the move which led to Haaland’s opener.
Haaland, Doku and Savinho also pirouetted away from a set of boots snapping at their heels to create chances which they all took turns to waste.
It was a risky approach – one wrong spin would leave themselves open in transition, a fact which Tottenham readily discovered after the interval – but Guardiola was in no mood to abandon his principles. As he warned pre-game: “We are not going to try to adapt.”
