It's a good job it is YOUR man of the match vote!
I have a confession of a minor nature to make. Your man of the match Mousa Dembele was not my choice. My highest scoring players were Victor Wanyama and Danny Rose. It is a good job that it is YOUR vote, and I do respect the voters' choice, especially as over 200 individuals took the time to have their say.
I expressed surprise on the message board about Dembele's early and quite convincing lead, and was shown stats which indicated the number and reliability of passes he made. I suggested that I might watch the full TV recording of the game, but I'll admit to not having done that. I did watch Match of the Day, and of course Dembele's most significant involvement, of winning the penalty from which Harry Kane scored, was shown, along with an early second half pass to set up a run to the Arsenal box by Son Heung-min. In my original report, I attributed this pass to Wanyama, and I have made the necessary amendment.
Most of Dembele's contributions to the game did not make the condensed highlights, but Danny Murphy was glowing in his praise of Mousa's contribution, where he consistently closes down opponents, wins turnovers and passes to a team-mate. Pochettino calls him a genius, so who am I to argue? Don't get me wrong, I am a Dembele admirer, but I didn't make him an 8 out of 10 man on Sunday.
May I be so bold as to suggest that the vast majority of those successful passes were of the simple, short variety? I thought Eriksen's creative juices were more evident in this game, and the "Plan B" formation worked in his favour with both Son and Kane often getting ahead of our playmaker, together with the advancing full-backs, of course!
Spurs do frustrate me a lot at the moment for the reasons I have often mentioned in my reports, but I was not alone in my views among some of my regular neighbours at away games.
Anyway, it is now a fact that the last time were were unbeaten for our first 11 games was in our Double-winning season of 1960-61, although we had more points (25) after 11 games as recently as 2011. Mauricio Pochettino is the first Spurs manager to be unbeaten in his first five top flight (league) North London Derby matches, and Harry Kane has equalled Gareth Bale's five Premier League goals against our local rivals. Of course, there was football before the Premier League came along and players such as Bobby Smith (10), Alan Gilzean, Jimmy Greaves (7 apiece), Les Allen, Steve Archibald and Cliff Jones (6 each) have all scored more goals against Arsenal!
· See the spursometer in full.
· Did you know? - Vincent Janssen is the only one of our players to have actually played (either by starting or coming off the bench) in all 17 of our games so far this season. Jan Vertonghen and Christian Eriksen (15) have made the most starts so far, with Victor Wanyama only one behind. Wanyama also has one appearance as substitute.
Premier League results 05-06.11.16
B'mouth 1-2 S'derland
Burnley 3-2 C. Palace
Man City 1-1 M'brough
West Ham 1-1 Stoke
Chelsea 5-0 Everton
Arsenal 1-1 Spurs
Hull 2-1 S'hampton
Liverpool 6-1 Watford
Swansea 1-3 Man Utd
Leicester 1-2 West Brom
Premier League Table
P W D L F-A GD Pts
1. Liverpool 11 8 2 1 30-14 16 26
2. Chelsea 11 8 1 2 26-9 17 25
3. Man City 11 7 3 1 25-10 15 24
4. Arsenal 11 7 3 1 24-11 13 24
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5. Spurs 11 5 6 0 15-6 9 21
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6. Man Utd 11 5 3 3 16-13 3 18
7. Everton 11 5 3 3 15-13 2 18
8. Watford 11 4 3 4 15-19 -4 15
9. Burnley 11 4 2 5 11-15 -4 14
10. S'hampton 11 3 4 4 12-12 0 13
11. West Brom 11 3 4 4 12-15 -3 13
12. Stoke 11 3 4 4 13-18 -5 13
13. B'mouth 11 3 3 5 13-16 -3 12
14. Leicester 11 3 3 5 13-18 -5 12
15. M'brough 11 2 5 4 10-12 -2 11
16. C. Palace 11 3 2 6 16-19 -3 11
17. West Ham 11 3 2 6 11-20 -9 11
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18. Hull 11 3 1 7 10-24 -14 10
19. Swansea 11 1 2 8 10-21 -11 5
20. S'derland 11 1 2 8 9-21 -12 5
