Spurs 0 Liverpool 0 (Prem) Sep 10 2005

[TLW]

Spurs 0 LIVERPOOL 0

Report by AWS at White Hart Lane

Scorer(s) - Half Time - 0-0 Venue - White Hart Lane Date - Sat 10 Sep 2005 Star Man - Momo Sissoko

 

 

 

 

 

I used to hate going to the Lane - we never seemed to do well,the ground was a shithole and you needed eyes in the back and sides of your heads to spot the ambush from the lovely locals on the long trudge back to Seven Sisters station. These days we still rarely get a result but it's one of my favourite aways. The atmosphere is usually good with the home support at least making a bit of effort and although we're stuck away in the corner you get a good view and we get a reasonable allocation of seats.

As the game kicked off I noticed that there must have been a few hundred empty seats in our end and we couldn't have sold out because even after the late arrivals there were a lot of spaces. But £43 is a lot of money and sooner or later Premiership football as a spectator sport is going to disappear up its own very expensive arse.

The absences didn't affect the support however as we were lively throughout. Good renditions of the usual favourites plus We Won It Fivetimes and Where's Yer European Cups. The usual confusion as to how to finish the La Bamba song - I'm sticking with Nunez for the moment. The Gerrard song was noticeable by its absence which suggests he's not been forgiven by quite a few people - well not until his next goal anyway.

We started brightly and dominated at first but without creating much. A snap shot which went wide from Cisse was followed by a closer shot from Defoe (which Reina may well have just got his fingers to) as he got away from Carra in the area. Spurs came more into the game and got on top but overall the first half was fairly close without any clear chances even though Reina did misjudge a weak cross which also eluded everybody else. Crouch nearly scored from the only decent cross he got all game. As half-time approached a free kick was only parried by Reina and the loose ball ended up bouncing on top of the bar.

Sissoko came on for the second half as Hamann was apparently still suffering from taking a well struck free kick to his head. So far this season I reckon Sissoko has been our best player and so it proved again as his high energy level coupled with some nice, tight passing helped us get back on top. The game ebbed and flowed as Spurs were also playing well and although neither side were creating much against well-organised defences the game was proving an attractive encounter.

Cisse hit a fine shot which Robinson did well to save and Riise hit a thunderbolt against the bar with Robinson well beaten but it rebounded on the wrong side of the line. Reina made a reasonable save only for the rebound to fall to a Spurs player who blazed it over the bar - the tv replay showed he was well off-side in any event.

The refereeing team must have decided before the game to watch out for and penalise corners crossing the line because a goal for each side was disallowed for this reason within a period of five minutes or so. Crouch's "goal" would probably have been ruled out anyway for climbing over Gardiner but at least he got there.

Alonso came on for Warnock with Riise dropping to left back, Garcia switching to the left and Sissoko to the right. However this formation didn't last too long as a knackered Crouch soon came off and Traore came on with Riise pushing forward again.

The excitement of the "goals" was the last time either side really threatened other than a scuffed shot from Cisse when he seemed to be trying to sweep the ball in from a nice pull-back rather than follow his usual instincts and welly it. Although both sides pushed on for the three points they weren't taking any real chances and you felt that no-one was too unhappy with a draw which was a fair reflection of the game.

Overall I thought our performance was fairly encouraging and we look as if we're going to be a lot harder to beat on our travels this year. Crouch made a reasonable League debut - he worked hard and made a nuisance of himself even against Gardiner and King who are perhaps one of the tallest pair of defenders he's going to come up against. But there's still lots of work to be done on his partnership with Cisse (who also did pretty well but was still doing too much of the arm-waving for my liking) and watching from the stand it was very noticeable how Crouch just hasn't got the pace to harry the defenders when they have got the ball so our defending only really started at the half-way line.

The real disappointments for me were Garcia who did very little all game and Riise who at times was embarassing with his lack of ball control and inability to cross. Finnan seems to be back to his Mr. Average standard of the season before last but hopefully he'll get himself out of that rut soon. Gerrard played well in bursts but he's looking tired already which does not bode well and I wouldn't be surprised to see him rested soon. Better performances from just two out of these four players would probably have been enough for us to collect all three points from a good Spurs team.


Team: Reina; Finnan, Carragher, Hyypia, Warnock (Alonso); Garcia, Hamann (Sissoko), Gerrard, Riise; Cisse, Crouch (Traore):