Spurs fans' Pavlyuchenko campaign growing fast!
Just under 200 Spurs Odyssey readers have offered their assessments of the performance of Spurs individual players, the team, the manager and even the referee, leading to the final gradings of this match exclusive "Spursometer" for yesterday's game at Wigan.
Until this season, I used to prepare the "Spursometer" on the basis of personal thoughts and sometimes a very small circle of frinds and/or associates. I have found that generally I adopted a middle of the road attitude, whereas the habits of the readership are to be harsh when we are bad, and generous when we are good, or do well. Such is the case this week.
Making such a survey open on the web inevitably draws mickey-taking contributions from opoosition fans, and in this match an example of such activity came with an award of 1 out of 10 for one of the star substitutes Luka Modric. Modric made light of the heavy pitch and won a grade of 7.8 for his 20 minute performance. Despite such ridiculous grades I am more than happy that the overall assessments are a good representation of opinion and performance.
There was no doubting who was the Spurs man of the match and that was Roman Pavlyuchenko, denied a Premier League start all season, and scoring two fine goals after replacing Jermain Defoe after 73 minutes. "Super Pav" has scored a whopping 8.5, and has surely earnt himself a start on Wednesday night against Bolton. Pav has been allowed only two starts in all games this season, and those were in the Carling Cup. Has Harry Redknapp forgotten that Pavlyuchenko scored in almost every round of last year's Carling Cup competition? Pavlyuchenko clearly does still have scoring prowess, and the campaign by Spurs fans for the manager to select him is still building to a crescendo, especially as Peter Crouch scored the lowest grade of all 14 players against Wigan.
Pav became the sixth Premier League player this season to score two goals after coming off the bench, and Spurs' aggregate score of 12-1 over Wigan this season was the highest in Premier League history. Jermain Defoe has matched 4 other players in Premier League records by scoring six goals over two league games against the same opponents in a season. Two of the others were gooners, one was Alan Shearer, and the first was Andy (he used to be called that!) Cole against Ipswich in 1994-95, when Man Utd's aggregate was only 11-3. Cole scored against Ipswich for Newcastle before he got his five in Man Utd's 9-0 win.
Results 20-21.02.10
Arsenal 2-0 S'derland
Everton 3-1 Man Utd
P'tsmouth 1-2 Stoke
West Ham 3-0 Hull
Wolves 0-2 Chelsea
A. Villa 5-2 Burnley
Blackburn 3-0 Bolton
Fulham 2-1 B'mingham
Man City 0-0 Liverpool
Wigan 0-3 Spurs
Barclays Premier League
Pos Team P W D L F A GD Pts
1 Chelsea 27 19 4 4 63 22 41 61
2 Man Utd 27 18 3 6 63 24 39 57
3 Arsenal 27 17 4 6 63 30 33 55
4 Spurs 27 13 7 7 48 26 22 46
5 Man City 26 12 10 4 48 33 15 46
6 Liverpool 27 13 6 8 43 27 16 45
7 A. Villa 26 12 9 5 37 21 16 45
8 Everton 26 10 8 8 38 37 2 38
9 Fulham 27 10 7 10 32 29 3 37
10 B'mingham 26 10 7 9 25 28 -3 37
11 Stoke 26 8 10 8 26 29 -3 34
12 Blackburn 27 9 7 11 29 43 -14 34
13 West Ham 26 6 9 11 35 40 -5 27
14 S'derland 26 6 8 12 32 44 -12 26
15 Wigan 26 6 7 13 26 52 -26 25
16 Wolves 26 6 6 14 21 44 -23 24
17 Hull 27 5 9 13 25 54 -29 24
18 Bolton 26 5 8 13 29 50 -21 23
19 Burnley 26 6 5 15 27 55 -28 23
20 P'tsmouth 26 4 4 18 21 44 -23 16
