Harry's highs and lows at The Emirates
Unsurprisingly, many players scored their lowest mark of the season on this week's Spursometer (Arsenal - 26.02.12), which is best forgotten really.
Some of our star players scored less than 5 out of 10 for the first time this season, and their overall averages took a severe knock. It is distressing to report that the likes of Ledley King, Scott Parker and Gareth Bale (all contenders for our Player of the Season vote) hit such a low point. Of those three, only Bale played in the previous worst performance of the season, which was the 5-1 home defeat by Man City in August. It's a funny old day when your goalkeeper scored the highest (only 6 mind), when he conceded 5 goals. Brad Friedel did make two fine saves though from Rosicky's first half header and Benayoun's second half shot.
Emmanuel Adebayor became the first player to score for both sides of North London in the Derby fixture since Jimmy Robertson. Robertson made the move down the Seven Sisters Road in October 1968 in one of the worst ever Bill Nicholson transfer moves, when we got the ill-equipped David Jenkins in exchange. Robertson scored against us in the September 1969 fixture, when we did have the last laugh, winning 3-2. John Pratt scored the winner in that game, and incidentally, I did spot John Pratt at Gillespie Road on his way to watch the game. Here's a man who still bleeds Tottenham. How we could have done with 14 such men on Sunday! Robertson only ever played in one game for Arsenal against Spurs in his 18 month stay at Highbury.
So, in 4 games in charge of Spurs at The Emirates, Harry Redknapp has won 1, drawn 1 and lost 2 games. Both last season's win, and that dramatic 4-4 come-back were amongst his many highs as Spurs manager, but what he and his players need to understand is that the 3-0 defeat in October 2009, and Sunday's 5-2 were two of the lowest points in his tenure. Losing one game to Arsenal is many times worse than any other defeat, and it certainly hurt most this week, after we had had a two goal lead in the league fixture for the first time in 19 years.
The Like for Like table has taken a knock too, as the defeat means a loss of 3 points over last season's matching game. We are still 10 points better off than last season though, and can do little worse, even if we should lose at home to Man Utd this week-end, having drawn that game last year. You can view the updated Like for Like table here
I could write a book about the comments received this week, and whilst I do appreciate all comments received, I haven't got space here this week. The full results of the survey (without comments) are available here
Results 25-26.02.12
Chelsea 3-0 Bolton
Newcastle 2-2 Wolves
QPR 0-1 Fulham
West Brom 4-0 S'derland
Wigan 0-0 A. Villa
Man City 3-0 Blackburn
Arsenal 5-2 Spurs
Norwich 1-2 Man Utd
Stoke 2-0 Swansea
Barclays Premier League
Pos Team P W D L F A GD Pts
1 Man City 26 20 3 3 67 19 48 63
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2 Man Utd 26 19 4 3 63 26 37 61
3 Spurs 26 16 5 5 51 30 21 53
4 Arsenal 26 14 4 8 53 37 16 46
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5 Chelsea 26 13 7 6 47 31 16 46
6 Newcastle 26 12 7 7 38 38 0 43
7 Liverpool 25 10 9 6 29 23 6 39
8 Norwich 26 9 8 9 38 43 -5 35
9 S'derland 26 9 6 11 34 30 4 33
10 Everton 25 9 6 10 26 27 -1 33
11 Fulham 26 8 9 9 32 36 -4 33
12 Stoke 26 9 6 11 26 38 -12 33
13 West Brom 26 9 5 12 33 35 -2 32
14 Swansea 26 7 9 10 28 34 -6 30
15 A. Villa 26 6 11 9 29 34 -5 29
16 Wolves 26 5 7 14 30 51 -21 22
17 QPR 26 5 6 15 26 44 -18 21
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18 Blackburn 26 5 6 15 37 59 -22 21
19 Bolton 26 6 2 18 29 54 -25 20
20 Wigan 26 4 8 14 23 50 -27 20
