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What you might have settled for before the game does not necessarily
mean that the final result is what you are happy with. Things
change and with them, so changes expectation and being 2-0 up away from
home in Germany, in the club's first Champions League Group game, your
mind starts to drift to the sight of Spurs with three points net to
their name in the Group A table, but then a gaffe just before the break
and a sloppy bit of defending just after it left Spurs hanging on for a
while, before having a couple of late opportunities to steal the game,
which finished 2-2. Spurs entered
the game having to re-arrange the side after Luka Modric's injury on
Saturday and moving to a 4-4-1-1 formation. With van der Vaart
playing behind Crouch up top, Spurs set up to make sure they did not get
out-numbered in midfield. And for the first 42 minutes it all went
to plan.
Spurs took the early advantage in passing
the ball better than Bremen and forcing the home team into rushed
attempts to find their front two, which failed to come off. Spurs
were moving the ball well, not always in positions of danger, but
enjoyed long spells of possession, with Werder not seemingly that
bothered about closing us down, giving time and space to get the ball
into the goalmouth. Bale was unlucky to run out of turf as he
sprinted onto van der Vaart's pass, hoping to pull the ball back to
Crouch on the near post and then Wesley got inside Corluka at the other
end and fired a shot on goal, much like Young Boys' first goal, but the
shot sailed just wide.
Then, 12 minutes in, it happened.
Tottenham's first goal in the competition proper, with a good move and a
fine finish, even if it was from the Finnish Bremen defender.
Assou-Ekotto, who was linking well with Bale on the left, knocked a ball
over Fritz's head and set the Welshman on another run, which he took to
the line and pulled a ball back just beyond the near post and a Crouch
was poised to side-foot home the ball, Pasanen slid in ahead of him and
got the touch that took the ball into the back of the net. Cue
rapturous celebrations in the Spurs section, with a few jumping up and
down in other parts of the ground too !!
It was a well created goal and putting
the ball along the grass when it had been raining for a good while was a
good tactic, as the defender probably didn't expect it to come at him
that quickly. While Arnautinovic slid a glancing header harmlessly wide,
Spurs set about scoring an even better goal.
Rafael van der Vaart put over a left wing
free-kick, but it was cleared out centrally to about 35 yards out, where
Jermaine Jenas was waiting. Shaping his body like Gareth Bale did
for the volley at Stoke, he swept a pass out to the left, where he found
the Dutchman again with a pin-point ball. van der Vaart looked up,
played a cross into the box about 15 yards out and Peter Crouch rose
above the hapless Pasanen to plant his header firmly past Wiese, who
didn't have a chance to stop it.
2-0 and the Tottenham fans were in a
place they didn't expect to be in. Happy to be there, but there
might well have been a bit of pinching of themselves going on. Not
that it wasn't deserved, but a lot of us have been there before and know
just what Tottenham are capable of.
Bremen staged a bit of a recovery, with
Marin coming in off the left wing to hit a shot at goal, which brought
weak shouts for a penalty when it hit Tom Huddlestone on the back of his
arm, as he turned away from the ball. He did have his hands up,
but not moving them in a direction forward towards the ball. With
half an hour gone, Spurs had another presentable chance, with Bale
taking the ball off Fritz, who he gave a wretched night, then putting
another low ball into the box, which Wiese could not hold, but managed
to spill just far enough away from Rafael to get anything on it and then
Fritz got back to deny Jenas as he ran onto the loose ball.
Five minutes later, Kaboul went away down
the right, like he did at Eastlands at the end of last season, putting a
ball in that Ledley King could not get a decent contact with and the
ball was knocked out to Bale just outside the D on the edge of the box
and his shot produced a diving stop from Wiese. With Spurs holding
the balance of play, the Bremen coach decided to try and change things
with the ineffective Bargfrede going off to be preplaced by A. Hunt - a
player exonerated of racist remarks made to an England player in an
Under-21 match, but where there's smoke ...
The change didn't make an immediate
effect, as Spurs were still keeping Werder pegged back with a couple of
corners causing the defence problems and then van der Vaart pinging a
shot from distance, but it was always too high to trouble the keeper.
And then, out of nothing, Spurs handed Bremen a goal two minutes before
the interval. With no pressure, the ball bounced on the middle of
the 18 yard line and Assou-Ekotto ran onto it and skied it and sliced it
with his wrong foot, with the ball going out nearer to Tottenham's goal
on the Bremen left hand touchline. A quick throw saw Spurs
sleeping and a ball from Wesley was too high for King and as Almeida ran
in, Assou-Ekotto appeared to drop off the striker to leave him the easy
task of glancing a header past Cudicini, who had stayed at home on his
line. Maybe the keeper could have come for it, but it would have
been a risky move; maybe King could have taken a better position to
attack the ball, but it was a quick re-start and Spurs were not set to
deal with it. Maybe Assou-Ekotto could have challenged, but, even
better, he could have avoided panicking into giving away a dangerous
situation in the first place.
Going in at 1-2 rather than 0-2 made a
big difference to the half-time team-talks in both dressing rooms, I
imagine. Harry had to try and rein in his anger at the way the
goal had been conceded and concentrate on the way the side had taken to
the game from the off. For Werder Bremen, the words on offer were
easier than they might have been, with the emphasis on getting after
Tottenham more and not allowing us to play the ball around. The
harassing of the Spurs players could only get better and so could
Werder's play.
It didn't take long to prove that fact,
with Mario Marin soon taking the initiative, as he darted here and there
Modric-like and showed a great ability on the ball. The first
chance came when Arnautovic put a ball into the box and Kaboul go tit
out, but only as far as Hunt, who tried to curl it past Cudicini, but
the Italian threw up a strong wrist to take the ball over the bar with a
very good stop from close range. The respite was short, as Marin
picked up a clearance on the left and came inside, leaving two players
behind him and as Kaboul and Corluka backed off, he pulled back his
right foot, putting his shot inches inside Carlo's right hand post as
Spurs looked on. It was a gutting moment, as the game seemed to be
swinging inexorably in Bremen's favour.
Both goals had been avoidable and Spurs
will have to learn quickly that what they might get away with in the
Premier League will not escape the opponents in the Champions League.
Robbie Keane made an entrance with van der Vaart struggling with a calf
injury. The Irishman made little impact as the ball failed to
stick up front and kept coming back towards the Spurs goal. Later
in the game, he did make a couple of telling contributions, but at this
stage, neither he nor Crouch could provide any respite to the attacking
from the home team
Ten minutes later the break, a long ball
down the middle caught out Kaboul and King, giving Almeida a shooting
opportunity, but he failed to keep it low enough to worry Cudicni and
then just before the hour a Messi-like piece of skill in the box saw
Marin turn Corluka all ends up to get past him tight to the dead-ball
line and then hit a shot that went up in the air off Kaboul's block and
Cudicini had to grab the ball in the air before the little Bremen
midfielder fouled him. And it was Marin taking Almeida's pass in
the 67th minute to hit a quickly taken shot that had Cudicini scrambling
across goal before being relieved to see the shot slip narrowly wide to
his right.
A number of substitutions were made with
most shoring up the midfield to keep hold of what the teams had, but in
the last ten minutes, Spurs got a second wind and put pressure on the
Werder defence to try and win the match. Bale broke away on the
left, giving Fritz a view of his heels before sliding a low ball across
the six yard box with Pasanen getting a touch to take the ball away from
Keane at the near post and to leave it going behind Crouch on the far
post. When Crouch did get in on goal in the 87th minute, courtesy
of a slick Palacios pass through the square German defence, the tall
striker over-did his intended dink over the keeper and put it wide with
the goal gaping.
It wasn't all Tottenham's way in the
closing stages, with Hunt hitting a powerful shot after being supplied
by Marin, but Cudicini got enough behind the ball to keep it out as the
clock ticked down.
The final whistle was a bit of an
anti-climax after so much incident in the game, but in the final
analysis, I guess both teams might have settled for a draw and with
Internazionale being held to a 2-2 draw at Twente, the group is still
all square with all to play for.
So, a lesson learned ? Hopefully,
and it is one that could equally be applied to the Premier League in
finishing games off or, at least, holding onto what you have.
stanford rivers |
Werder
Bremen
(Away)
(o.g.)
