We Never Stop (Conceding Set Pieces)

Hopefully that title conveys the extent of my weariness after this past weekend's double whammy of disappointing Spurs results.

Sometimes it's hard to get motivated to write this newsletter after such a letdown of a matchday, but I would still like to provide my perspective as an alternative to so many of the reactionary takes across the fanbase. So I'm putting the Challengers soundtrack on to hype myself up and will try to power through. (Side note: definitely see that film if you love sports, slightly COYS Zendaya, and/or techno scores.)

In this issue: Brighton recap | Arsenal recap | Previewing Chelsea | News from around the Lane

As mentioned in the last issue, I won't be able to get too granular with the tactical analysis since I was watching the games simultaneously and haven't had a chance to watch either one back. Instead, I'll go with a "Top Three Things" format for the match recaps in lieu of the usual chronological play-by-play.

WSL Matchday 19 recap | Tottenham 1 - 1 Brighton & Hove Albion

England 81 ' | Terland 17'

I really am trying my best to be sanguine about the results between now and the FA Cup final, because truly, all that matters is keeping players fit and in form. But it still stung a bit to draw at home to Brighton after creating so many chances (albeit of varying quality) and defending decently overall.

Starting XI:

The Beth-England-at-right-winger experiment continued for the second game in a row, while we saw the return of the Finnish double pivot in the midfield. Charli Grant did get a start as predicted, but it was Ashleigh Neville who got to rest on the bench rather than Amanda Nildén. They may switch places in the next match against Everton, allowing Grant to start on her preferred left side instead.

Also notable was who got left out of the matchday squad precautionarily: Celin Bizet (which had been planned) as well as Drew Spence and Martha Thomas (both gameday decisions). Robert Vilahamn is not taking any risks in hopes of having full squad availability for the final. The upside of those decisions was that Matilda Vinberg got another start at left winger to keep building up partnerships with the other forwards, while Grace Clinton started at the #10 instead.

Top Three Things:

1. England approaching peak form - Although Beth was once again playing out of her natural position—or even the makeshift #10 position she has sometimes played to accommodate the more in-form strikers, Jess Naz and Thomas—she appears to be back to her old self on the pitch and finally fully recovered from her pre-season hip surgery. Her goal in the second half did come after shifting into the striker position, however, showing that she can execute different roles throughout a game. That flexibility and can-do attitude have made her a great captain. And a small note on the finish: I suspect she's the only player in the squad that could pull it off.

2. Tough to contain Terland - Look, she's one of the best strikers in the league and joint-second in the Golden Boot race. I don't think she has a chance of catching Bunny Shaw for the top spot even with Shaw's season-ending injury, but she has almost single-handedly kept Brighton safely out of the relegation conversation this season. Becky Spencer had to make a big save in the first half when Terland's poacher instincts nearly helped her capitalize on a poor back pass from Amy James-Turner. She scored on the next Brighton play after Spencer tipped her initial header onto the crossbar; neither James-Turner nor Luana Bühler stayed switched on to mark her for the follow-up attempt.
3. Naz neutralized by Seagull's defense - Forgive me for praising Brighton so much, but they kind of deserve it for making sure our biggest attacking threat of late was marked out of the game. Naz had very few opportunities to utilize her pace and had a relatively quiet game for her recent standards. She did have a good chance to get on the scoresheet with an assist by playing a decisive ball to England arriving centrally in the box, but Brighton's keeper, Melina Loeck, was good for the save.

England nearly completed a brace to win the game but saw her shot come off the crossbar, while Clinton had a couple of opportunities as well, including a header late on that went straight at Loeck. It ended honors even and Spurs still in 6th place to end the matchday.

SAtP Player of the Match: Ash Neville

Sure, she only played about twenty minutes including stoppage time, but her impact was outsized compared to her minutes. It felt like we entered a period of dominance in the second half once she came into the game, not just in the attack but also in the sense that Brighton rarely troubled our defense from that point on. And her looping cross for the equalizer was a thing of beauty. Special kudos to Kit Graham as well (another substitute) who delivered a no-look pass to Ash before the assist—a feat only possible because of their years of built-up chemistry on the pitch. I thought Grant put in a great shift and even had a couple of chances to score, but Neville's experience was a big asset in the closing stages of the game.

Notable and quotable:

• Jess marked her 100th appearance for Spurs, an accomplishment delayed by major injuries in previous seasons.

Some reflections from Jess on the milestone and the season:

I think this season's been really good for me personally. The manager's come in and it's been a fresh start for everyone... just learning off people like Beth and Martha, it's definitely grown my confidence and then obviously being able to perform and score goals and assists has been great.

I've hit a lot of milestones this season so it's just great to top it off to play at Wembley in a final.

It's been beautiful to see her confidence blossoming, not just in her performances (she’s developing a big game player reputation) but also in the way she’s become more talkative in interviews and showing more of her personality. And she might not even be at her peak yet! Here's to many more appearances and many more goals.

• Ash's assist for Beth's goal was her first assist of the season in the WSL.

• Molly Bartrip made her first appearance since March 3. She had dealt with an illness that kept her out of the squad for over a month and a half. Molly had a bit of rust to shake off at first when she subbed in at the 57th-minute triple change, but by the end of the game, she looked back up to her usual quality, delivering a few long balls for promising attacks and marshaling the back line.

PL Matchday 33 recap | Tottenham 2 - 3 Arsenal

We all know this scoreline sucks, but at least it's better than the halftime scoreline of 0-3.

And you never know how much differently a game would turn out if certain factors were changed (say, dodgy officiating and a complete and utter inability to defend on set pieces), but based on the baseline performance I think it's fair to say there's another universe in which we win this game. I wish we lived in that universe, but alas, we're stuck in the one where Arsenal could very well go on to win the league and we didn't do enough to stop them. I know, I hate it too. Let's move on.

Speaking of the officiating though, I am quite literally not going to get into it here because enough people have in other spaces (including myself on the latest Tottenham Depot episode). I grow weary of sounding like a broken record on this topic. And unfortunately, the Liverpool reverse fixture is only two games away...

Just know that I will never forgive VAR for stealing the joy of a Micky van de Ven equalizer in the NLD.

Starting XI:

Take a good long look at this lineup, because we won't see it again this season—or possibly ever, but I don't want to get into transfer window speculation now.

Ben Davies replaced Destiny Udogie at left fullback, Pierre-Emile Højbjerg got the midfield start over Yves Bissouma, and Brennan Johnson was benched for Dejan Kulusevski.

I was disappointed not to see Richarlison in the starting lineup, simply because I thought we would need his physicality and penchant for pressing.

Top Three Things:

1. Two out of three captains - It's not that James Maddison had an awful game, he simply hasn't been contributing enough lately to continue starting week after week. And in the case of a derby match, it was disappointing to feel like he lacked the drive and focus of the other two members of the leadership team. Cristian Romero was our biggest attacking threat in the game (which is probably a bad thing in the macro sense, but was encouraging in the micro) and scored the all-important first goal for Spurs to spark the comeback attempt. Son Heung-min didn't have as many clear-cut chances, but delivered a flawless penalty under huge pressure (just our third penalty of the season, absurdly). To be fair to Maddison, I suspect he's still suffering some lingering effects from his injury and would benefit from a rest in the next game for more than just the mental refresh.
2. We beat ourselves, not Arsenal - I take a small amount of comfort from the fact that Arsenal didn't score outstanding goals to win this game. Two of the three goals we conceded came from mismanagement of defensive set pieces, and the other should never have been allowed to stand due to a penalty foul on Kulusevski right before the Arsenal counter attack. At the same time, that's what makes the loss so frustrating in the context of Arsenal's title rice. Too many times this season their opponents have made it far too easy to pick up points, Spurs included.
3. Muddled team selection - I really don't know what this starting lineup was expected to do. On the one hand, you've got a very defensive-minded midfield behind Maddison and a lot less pace on the left flank than usual with Davies filling in for Udogie as well as on the right side with Kulusevski starting over Johnson. So naturally, a striker like Richarlison would seem better suited to leading the line with his ability to hold up the ball and get on the end of headers during set piece opportunities, which we might have to rely on more with less speed and fluidity in the attack. But then we also saw the centerbacks trying to compensate for the stilted attack by getting more involved than usual, Romero in particular, leaving us vulnerable to counter attacks... which the rest of the personnel weren't really equipped to deal with (see: Davies on Saka's goal). It was just confusing, and even though Pape Sarr's introduction at halftime and Richarlison's later entrance helped to reverse some of these trends, it was obvious that we'd been on the back foot to start the game and dug too deep of a hole to get out of. The attempted comeback was valiant, but still too little too late.

SAtP Player of the Match: Cristian Romero

Nobody had bigger "I'll do it myself" energy in this derby than Cuti. He gets it. I don't even care that his goal was the product of David Raya making a massive error. He was still in the right place at the right time and wanted it more.

Now, we just need to get him and the rest of the team into a tactical bunker (no, not that kind) to focus and come up with a better plan for defending corners and free kicks. I have a feeling Cuti will have taken the embarrassment of the NLD scoreline personally and will be figuring out some solutions with or without the help of the coaching staff.

Notable and quotable:

• While we're on Romero, that was his fifth goal of the Premier League season. Fifth!!! I don't want to call him out by name again, but that's more goals than a certain attacking midfielder. Cuti has made five more appearances though, to be fair. I guess.

• While we've done a good job of drawing own goals this season (five), we've now conceded three ourselves.

• We haven't earned any points since matching last season's points total with the Nottingham Forest win.

• Additionally, claiming top 4 is no longer in our hands, even if we win both games in hand. For what it's worth, Aston Villa don't have an easy fixture schedule to close out the season, including a two-legged Europa Conference League semi-final tie that begins today.

• Ange on the state of PL officiating:

Games are not refereed in the stadium anymore. They are refereed somewhere else and no one will convince me otherwise. It's not even re-refereed, it's refereed somewhere else. That's why I don't celebrate goals anymore. I wait for somebody down the road. [The refs] just go, "You know what, I'll just wait and see what the bloke down the road thinks."

I honestly have to agree with him. VAR has clearly made the center referees complacent if the blatant missed penalty on Davies is anything to go by.

Previewing PL Matchday 34 — Chelsea

I want to feel confident about this fixture. I really do. Chelsea are not a good team this season.

But terrible, unlucky things always seem to happen when we play them and form goes straight out the window. There are derbies, and then there's the chaos that is Chelsea vs Spurs. We can only hope to survive it.

Annoyingly, the bad luck has already begun before kickoff. We got two disheartening injury updates: Ben Davies and Timo Werner are both expected to be out for the rest of the season—which is only five fixtures now, but three of them are very difficult! It's rotten timing for Davies especially since he was replacing another player already on the season-ending injury list, Destiny Udogie.

Emerson Royal is likely to start at left fullback now, although there's potential for some experimentation (which I do not necessarily endorse), like Radu Drăgușin filling in there or even moving to left centerback while Micky van de Ven is pushed out the fullback spot. My hope is that we see Son Heung-min shift out to the winger role in place of Werner while Richy starts at striker, but we could see Brennan Johnson starting on his less-preferred left side instead.

As for the rest of the starting lineup, I would really like to see Pape Sarr get the nod because we are a much more dynamic team with him in the side. I'd be curious to see him paired with Rodrigo Bentancur, a partnership we haven't seen enough of in my opinion.

Ange also shared that Oliver Skipp is available for selection again, but he's fallen so far out of favor that we're unlikely to see him make it on the pitch.

If you can believe it, Chelsea's injury list is even longer than Spurs', but their key player Cole Palmer will be back in contention. If their starters can't get the job done, they have very, very little quality to call upon from the bench.

Their last result was a 2-2 draw with our top 4 rivals, Aston Villa. Former Tottenham youth player Noni Madueke had a goal and assisted Conor Gallagher's late equalizer. On the other end of the scoresheet, Marc Cucurella gave up an own goal. The game before that was a 5-0 away loss to Arsenal, but as I always say: don't believe in football math. The fact that we lost to the same team by a far less dire margin doesn't mean anything.

Fun fact: Chelsea have the same number of PL clean sheets as us this season, with six (two of which came against Fulham, significantly). In other words, their defense has not been great! I want our forwards shooting on sight and testing Chelsea's backup keeper, Đorđe Petrović.

You hate to see a fixture like this being shoehorned in midweek because of a postponement, but this is the lot we've been dealt. Godspeed to the lads.

News from around the Lane

• The club announced that there will be a limited number of additional tickets available for the FA Cup final. If you're eligible to purchase, get on it!

• Big congratulations to Ria Percival and Araya Dennis, who helped Crystal Palace to secure promotion to the WSL while on loan. The Eagles had a record attendance of 6,796 for their title-winning final game of the Championship season, which Ria and Araya both started.

• Speaking of Ria, she is rumored to be open to staying at Crystal Palace if her loan can be converted to a permanent contract. She was a key part of the Eagles' promotion campaign during her loan and is likely to receive an offer.

• Not strictly Spurs-related, but relevant to the league Spurs Women play in: Bristol City are officially relegated from the WSL.

• And in Spurs Women alumni news, Rachel Furness hit her 100th WSL appearance.

• The Men's Academy U21s will host Aston Villa in the PL2 playoffs Round of 16 on May 6. The one-legged knockout round playoff games will include extra time and penalties if needed.

• Will Lankshear ended the PL2 regular season as the top scorer for the league, scoring 18 goals with zero penalties.

I'll be back with another issue on Friday with previews of the weekend games and a (hopefully happy) recap of the Men's Chelsea match. Fingers crossed, toes crossed, etc.

COYS

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