The 2:05 kick off caught out plenty of people who ended up missing our first goal after just 35 seconds.
Vertonghen whipped in the perfect cross from the left. Close enough to the goal that it evaded the clearances of the Everton defence yet far enough away that it was too far out for Howard to be expected to come out and claim it.
Second leg away to Inter and the quarter finals beckon. All we have to do is prevent complacency from getting the better of us and remain within two goals of Inter. Three if we score an away goal. Inter had chances in the first leg, they just failed to put them away, Spurs also had more chances that we should have put away so I can definitely see goals, and can't see past Spurs progressing.
Liverpool 3 Spurs 2
Premier League - 10th March 2013
A frustrating loss that one. Got ourselves in a position to take all three points and then threw it away with some highly cretinous play. I can accept defeat, it's part of sport, it's hard to accept the nature of the defeat, butultimatelyit gets put down to "a bad day at the office".
The game at Anfield promises to be an entertaining one. Both teams are in form and clawing their way up the table. Liverpool's rich vein of form reflects the upbeat mood on their forums ahead of this game. Most of their fans reckon they will be able to out score us which will remove the need to concentrate on stopping the in form Bale.
Well well well. Inter are obviously not quite the force they were when we last faced them during their reign as Champions League holders. A top performance from every Spurs player gave us a 3-0 lead going into the second leg.
We were one up very early on as Sigurdsson jinked his way out of trouble on the left, swung in a cross which was met by the head of Bale and the ball was sent into the far side of the net 1-0.
Long time visitors to this site may remember the post match article after we beat Inter 3-1 at The Lane back in 2010. (If you aren't or don't, it's here.) Lots of comments from Italian Inter fans that Bale had raped them. Well, either Inter fans are obsessed with rape, or the night Bale destroyed Maicon is still painfully fresh in their memories, because the talk of Bale based rape is occurring once more.
A selection of the Spurs player tweets following the 2-1 win against Arsenal...
Kyle Walker - Worth the 2 days in bed with sickness just for those precious 3 points today....back to bed so I'm 100% for Inter Milan Thursday #COYS
Jan Vertonghen - Celebrating in the dressing room!
Arsenal have been a strange creature in recent months. Putting five goals away against West Ham and Reading, seven goals against Newcastle, but then struggling to beat Villa, Stoke and Southampton. Not to mention getting beat 1-0 by Blackburn in the cup and being pretty much knocked out of the Champions League by Bayern.
Lazio have accrued a total of €180k in fines for three separate racist incidents in the group stages of the Europa League this year. Including €40k for racist behaviour at the Lane, UEFA reports....
"Lazio have been fined €90,000 for the racist behaviour of their fans, throwing of missiles and/or fireworks, incidents of a non-sporting nature, late handling of their team sheet and late arrival at the stadium, at the UEFA Europa League group stage match against Tottenham Hotspur FC on 22 November 2012 in Rome.
Fresh after the defeat to Leeds on the weekend, Tottenham travel to Carrow Road to face a Norwich side that have also just sustained a cup "shock" getting knocked out by non league Luton. At least we have some good league form to fall back on. Spurs unbeaten in seven, Norwich winless in six, it's a foregone conclusion isn't it?
Right, extended Christmas blogging break over, lets get back into this. QPR v Spurs then. Or Redknapp Rangers v AVB Hotspur as the media are billing it.
I don't buy into all this "Redknapp knows our weaknesses" hype the media are pushing. Any manager with half a brain can pick out a team's weaknesses and strengths, it's having the players to be able to exploit the weaknesses whilst containing the strengths that matter.
Tottenham 1 Swansea City 0
Premier League 16th December 2012
So much for the predicted free flowing goal fest between two attacking sides. It was more or less one way traffic and Spurs ended the game with almost 70% of the territorial advantage.
Even with 29 attempted shots to Swansea's three, it looked like it could have been one of those frustrating games where we fail to break down a team at the Lane only to concede a late winner.
| A sleepy AVBin frontof the twitter account... |
TheofficialSpurs twitter account ran a Q&A session with AVB this afternoon. All the questions and responses are below....
@AKAK45 what has impressed you most since arriving at Tottenham?
Goodison park isn't an easy place to go. Everton are a good side and one that is unbeaten in 11 home league games. Not to mention unbeaten in our last five visits.
They aren't exactly in flying form at the moment though, with two wins seven draws and one loss in their last ten. But their fans are pretty confident of putting an end to our current mini run of wins and their opinions seem to match those of many of the odds on thesports betting sitesout there as well.
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