Spurs Women Shine, Spurs Men Decline

And not the result you would have expected from either match!

I'm kicking things off today with the Spurs Women 2-1 victory at Manchester City, because it was definitely the most exciting Tottenham match of the weekend. On City's turf, where they had gone 33 straight home games unbeaten, our Spurs pulled off an upset win with lots of guts, a little guile, and a managerial masterclass from Rehanne Skinner.

The first half saw a more dominant performance from City; they had many, many chances to extend their one-goal lead, but didn't finish them, and it gave us some hope going into the second half. Some of City's missed chances were down to poor shooting, but there were several superb saves from our keeper Becky Spencer, who was back in the starting XI after staying on the bench for the season opener. As for the goal that City did score off a header from a corner kick, our poor defense was inexcusable, but clearly served as a wakeup call, and Spurs barely put a foot wrong on defense for the rest of the match.

I'm sure many of us were surprised to see the goal-scorer from matchday 1, Kit Graham, left out of the starting lineup. But when she subbed in early in the second half, her impact was immediate. She got the ball out to Chioma Ubogagu (herself a substitute as well) on the wing and then allowed Ubogagu's cross to pass underneath her in the box, leaving Rachel Williams free to kick it into the back of the net. This was Williams' first goal in the WSL since 2018! As if equalizing wasn't exciting enough, we nearly scored another goal to put us in the lead right away off a Williams-to-Naz breakaway. Jessica Naz's shot went just wide. I was really impressed with Naz again today; she's made leaps and bounds in her performance since last season, and she even had some key defensive moments. She wasn't the only player hustling, though--the whole team seemed compelled by a collective belief that we could win this match, and played accordingly. It was time to take some risks and keep pushing for the winning goal.

At that point, the game was clearly there for the taking, and Rehanne had plenty of capable fresh legs left to bring off the bench to get the job done. One such player was Rosella Ayane, who somehow got away with a clear handball before City scored for us with an own goal. Alas, no VAR in the WSL...🤫 I don't think we should feel too awful guilty about it, because on the run of play we definitely deserved all three points. We closed out the match with an airtight defense (okay, and one foul outside the box in stoppage time) and Spencer's solid presence in goal. She was my Player of the Match, for sure.

The only downsides from the match:  Spencer's back injury from last season seems to be causing her trouble again (she stayed in the game despite her visible discomfort), and Shelina Zadorsky had to sub out with an injury near the end of the match. Our first game after the women's international break is at home against Reading, so I would expect to see Korpela back in the gloves to give Spencer some extra time to recuperate.

I have to be honest, I wasn't really looking forward to this match because I thought it was likely to be a blowout win in City's favor, like most of our previous matchups have been. We had never beaten Manchester City before! But that just made the win that much more satisfying. This was probably the most thrilling Spurs Women match I've ever watched. Hopefully, we can start improving our results against the other Big 3/4 (depending on who you talk to) teams in the WSL and make Tottenham Hotspur Women a legitimate force to be reckoned with. There are definitely signs for encouragement with some of our new signings and Rehanne's tactics finally starting to make a difference. The belief is there!

Now let's bring the mood down...

...and talk about an extremely disappointing 3-0 loss for Spurs Men at Crystal Palace. Yes, we have to.

I hate to say I told y'all so, but I did accurately predict the lineup changes for this match:  Emerson making his debut, Tanganga shifting to CB, and Winks getting the start, though I thought he would be replacing Skipp rather than Bergwijn (numerically if not positionally). Instead, Bergwijn had the worse injury and Skipp stayed in the lineup, while Dele moved into the forward line.

To put it succinctly, this lineup/formation just... didn't work. Even before the  disastrous injury to Dier in the first half and then Tanganga's red card in the second, we were defending too much and not producing anything in the attack. Quite literally:  we had zero shots in the first half. Not even on target--zero shots at all! The midfield was like a black hole (we had a paltry 38% possession, by the way). Occasionally Lucas would dip back to try to carry the ball forward, but nobody was on the same wavelength, so his efforts never lead to any chances. And Kane was pretty anonymous. It would have been nice if he could have made a goal out of nothing like he did for England on Wednesday, but not this time. I think our struggles against Palace also illuminated how valuable Son and Bergwijn have been to the team's success this season.

It hurts me to say this, but it's true:  it felt like a Mourinho match.

Not the impression you want to have after Nuno was just awarded Manager of the Month for August, eh? At some point (very soon) we need to see evidence of the "attacking football" style that Nuno promised when he joined the club. In the Palace match, we were never on the front foot, and even though we defended pretty well until Dier's injury and the red card, that never should have been the primary strategy for the game. Crystal Palace are not that good of a team. We should have been taking the game to them from the first minute. No excuses.

That being said, I'm not going to call this a crisis just yet, because I'm sympathetic to the fact that Nuno's personnel options were less than ideal thanks to injuries and the quarantine fiasco from the international break. And having both starting CBs forced to leave the match was a huge issue when the only players available to replace them were Joe Rodon, who hadn't played in months, and Ben Davies, who is usually dependable but had one of his worst performances in this game. Hopefully this was a wake-up call for Nuno regarding our squad depth, as well as the need for a creative spark in the midfield if the Ndombele situation doesn't get sorted out (the January transfer window can't come soon enough). Still, Nuno left one of his available substitutions unused, and I would have liked to see Bryan Gil given a shot, if Ndombele is still in the doghouse.

Emerson Royal should be commended for making his PL debut in tough circumstances; I thought he did pretty well considering that he had Zaha to deal with.

Speaking of Zaha, a note on the red card. The first yellow for Tanganga was a fair call (as was the second), but it's ridiculous that Zaha was allowed to get away with grabbing Japhet by the throat in the same incident. Palace should also have been down to ten men. Sadly, Tanganga was the one who got punished for his rash challenges. It's easy to forget that Tanganga is still relatively inexperienced when it comes to the Premier League, so he's just going to have to learn to temper his decision-making when he's already on a yellow and dealing with an antagonistic opponent. At the same time, you don't want him to lose that aggressive style that's helped us out in other matches. It was a bad day at the office for most of the team, so I'm not going to be too harsh on him this time or suggest that he alone lost the match for Spurs.

Last note on this match:  maybe Spurs should have gone in for Odsonne Édouard. Scoring a brace on his PL debut is nothing to scoff at.

Up next:  ECL group stage begins

We play Stade Rennais, aka Rennes, on Thursday in the first group stage match of the Europa Conference League--in Rennes, unfortunately. It doesn't seem like our lineup options are going to be much better for that match, so it's probably going to be one of those "whoever is available" situations for most of the positions, unless we go the risky "just play the kids" route again... which didn't work out that well in the qualifying round. There's gotta be at least some balance of youth and experience.

I'm not familiar with any of the players on Rennes at all, so this will be a learning experience 😬.

COYS