Spurs and Ange Postecoglou live to fight another day.
It’s absurdly fitting that Postecoglou’s entire Spurs reign has been reduced to a high-risk one-or-done shot at a trophy with absolutely no safety net if or – and let’s be honest, this is still far more likely – when it goes wrong.
But today is not that day, and for now that’s all that matters. The season survives until April at least. Postecoglou survives until April at least.
This was also a performance that contained just enough positives, even if those must be caveated to within an inch of their lives to suggest that yes, they really could actually win this thing.
This was the sort of Angeball performance pundits are thinking of when they tell you how exciting Spurs are. Spurs fans themselves know from bitter personal experience that this has in recent times been the exception and not the rule, that an awful lot of their games feature all the flaws but precious little of the attacking drive and purpose.
But on the days and nights when the attacking football clicks they remain an irritatingly beguiling prospect. We’ve all now seen more than enough to know that it can’t and won’t work over the course of a long truth-revealing league season. But it absolutely could in a knockout competition if Spurs can get this team – or something like it – on the pitch and producing this performance – or something like it – just a few more times.
It’s easy to say it’s only AZ Alkmaar and it was very, very close to going horribly wrong. But AZ were canny and organised, having shown over two legs against Galatasaray and the first leg against Spurs that they had plenty about them.
Spurs face Eintracht Frankfurt next, with Lazio the likeliest semi-final opponents and Athletic Club or Man United in the final. It’s not easy, but it’s enormously achievable even for this bunch of lunatics.
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This was reminiscent of those now seemingly ancient games of late autumn against West Ham and Aston Villa, where, sure, Spurs were error-strewn and their own worst enemies and liable to do something unfeasibly stupid at any moment but also capable of the sort of dreamy, achingly beautiful, flowing attacks that are generally the preserve of very good teams indeed.
There will always be intense fragility about it, but it’s easier to accept when the beauty is also there.
Or to put it in blunter, footballing terms, it’s easier to accept Spurs looking occasionally short on numbers at the back when they also create attacking overloads at the other end. It’s easier to accept the occasional snafu from Spurs’ defenders when the attackers are also forcing them at the other end.
All too often in the Premier League this season, Spurs have had the look of a team reduced to 10 men and trying to play catch-up all over the field. Not enough bodies at the back, not enough bodies in the attack. It is a riddle to which Postecoglou has been unable to find a consistent answer.
The easing, if not total end, to the injury crisis left him and his players with no more excuses here and there could be none of last Thursday’s complaints about the effort, endeavour or output from senior players.
Son Heung-min’s basic numbers have remained solid this season, but anyone watching with their eyes knows what they’ve seen. Knows how often he has been half-a-yard short of speed, both in his feet and in his head.
Tonight was something far more like the old Son. He forced the error that led to Dominic Solanke teeing up Wilson Odobert to sweep home the first goal and was a constant, lively menace. There was none of the momentum-sapping ponderous uncertainty that has crept so tellingly into his game this season.
James Maddison was excellent, finishing a sweeping move for Spurs’ second goal and playing a key creative part early in the even better third goal. And ‘even better’ is underselling it, because it might just have been the Platonic ideal of an Angeball goal, starting with Guglielmo Vicario and Archie Gray calmly playing out through the initial press, Maddison taking out the middle of the park in one pirouette and Spurs surging forward from there to retake the lead in the tie they had relinquished with the all-too familiar defensive mix-up minutes earlier.
That came shortly after the departure of another standout player for Spurs on the night, and perhaps the one they have missed the very most in recent months. It is to be hoped Micky van de Ven’s withdrawal on the hour was a planned and scheduled necessity in his carefully-managed return to action and not anything more troubling.
The timing indicates the former, the fact he’d just completed a full-blooded sprint that damn near left scorch marks on the turf raises the inevitable fear that something went twang.
He, even more than Cristian Romero, has been the big miss in Tottenham’s defence this season. There are plenty of centre-backs who are vital to how their team defends. There are plenty of centre-backs who are significant attacking threats from dead-ball situations. We can think of few who are so utterly integral to the whole forward thrust of a team as Van de Ven is to Spurs.
He’s a relentlessly front-foot defender who drives Spurs up the pitch with the ball, and whose absurd recovery pace offers a safeguard that gives them freedom to stay further up the pitch without it.
The goal Spurs conceded was a horrible mix-up in the end, but there was no coincidence about the way the initial opportunity came about so soon after Van de Ven’s exit while Spurs were still readjusting to the smaller, less ambitious and less effective reality that has been their lot for months and months without him.
This will go down as a breakthrough night for Odobert, whose two goals were deserved reward for a player whose first season at Spurs has been so ruined by injury, but the real story of the game was one where Spurs’ senior players stood up in a way that has been all too rare.
Your Lucas Bergvalls and Your Djed Spences and Your Archie Grays all did their bit as is now customary, but they were able to follow the lead of senior players in a way that when you stop and think about it for even a second has been just ludicrously rare this season.
Postecoglou’s sh*t-or-bust Spurs remain on their very last chance, but tonight they’ve bought themselves another month at least in the saloon.
