· My thanks go to Paul Yarden's excellent THFC6061 Sports Stats, for some of the information presented here
In praise of Ledley King (again)
Ledley King played his 250th Premier League game for Spurs in Saturday's Wigan match. Ledley made his debut as a second half substitute at Anfield on May 1st 1999. (Liverpool 3 Spurs 2 - May 1st 1999)Ledley has scored 10 league goals in his career to date, and the first and fastest of them was at Bradford on December 9th, 2000. Ledley's goal was scored on exactly 9.7 seconds, fractionally faster than a 10 second Shearer goal for Newcastle. (Bradford 3 Spurs 3 - 9th December, 2000)
Spurs have now won the last seven consecutive Premier League matches in which Ledley King has played, and the eighth consecutive game in all in which Ledley has played, including last year's 4-1 Champions League win over FC Twente. The last game in which Ledley played that Spurs lost was the home game against Wigan on August 28th last year! (Spurs 0 Wigan 1 - 28th August, 2010)
Ledley has played in our last three Premier League games. The last time he did that was at the end of the 2009-10 season, when he actually played the last four games.
Since season 2007-08, Tottenham Hotspur have won 55% of their Premier League games with King starting, compared to just 34% without him.
Let's hope that Ledley can continue the miracle work and play next Sunday against Arsenal!
My rudimentary excel predictor feared the worst after our first two results, and had us in or near the bottom three based upon those games. However, this week the result-based programme suggests that we will not just finish in the top four, but third! Sunday's game will be a key pointer regarding our ongoing chances of such lofty status.
We had over 130 responses to the survey for the Wigan game ( See the Wigan Spursometer here), and Ledley scored an excellent 7.5, but was just pipped for man of the match by Gareth Bale, whose antics down the left wing led to Gohouri getting sent off, just as it led to the departure of Liverpool's Skrtel the week before. Gareth scored 7.6. Let's hope a desperate gooner suffers the same fate as Bale's last two opponents on Sunday!
Benoit Assou-Ekotto's mark suffered for that error which led to the Wigan goal, but "Benny" deserves our mighty admiration for driving himself up to Wigan, as he had not initially travelled due to illness. "Benny" is a cult figure, and an excellent left back, who will be remembered in years to come by most Spurs fans.
Results 24-26.09.11
Arsenal 3-0 Bolton
Chelsea 4-1 Swansea
Liverpool 2-1 Wolves
Man City 2-0 Everton
Newcastle 3-1 Blackburn
Stoke 1-1 Man Utd
West Brom 0-0 Fulham
Wigan 1-2 Spurs
QPR 1-1 A. Villa
Norwich 2-1 S'derland
Barclays Premier League
Pos Team P W D L F A GD Pts
1 Man Utd 6 5 1 0 22 5 17 16
2 Man City 6 5 1 0 19 5 14 16
3 Chelsea 6 4 1 1 12 7 5 13
4 Newcastle 6 3 3 0 7 3 4 12
5 Liverpool 6 3 1 2 8 8 0 10
6 Spurs 5 3 0 2 9 9 0 9
7 Stoke 6 2 3 1 4 6 -2 9
8 A. Villa 6 1 5 0 7 5 2 8
9 Norwich 6 2 2 2 7 8 -1 8
10 QPR 6 2 2 2 5 7 -2 8
11 Everton 5 2 1 2 6 6 0 7
12 Wolves 6 2 1 3 5 8 -3 7
13 Arsenal 6 2 1 3 9 14 -5 7
14 S'derland 6 1 2 3 7 6 1 5
15 Wigan 6 1 2 3 5 9 -4 5
16 Swansea 6 1 2 3 4 9 -5 5
17 Fulham 6 0 4 2 4 7 -3 4
18 Blackburn 6 1 1 4 8 13 -5 4
19 West Brom 6 1 1 4 3 8 -5 4
20 Bolton 6 1 0 5 8 16 -8 3
