3 hours ago
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Perhaps it’s appropriate that the last Premier League game of the Christmas weekend shouldn’t be a thriller. You’ve spent four days eating and drinking, the belly is straining at the belt, work is looming on Monday and there’s a dreadful sense that the holiday is over and you’ll soon have to get back to mundane chores: defrosting the freezer, filing the tax return, shopping for real food that might actually have some nutritional value.
For neutrals, this was the ideal game for dozing through on the sofa. Very little happened, and almost none of what did was pleasing on the eye, with the possible exception of the two passages of play Tottenham put together that led to Richarlison scoring goals that were subsequently ruled out for offside. At the start of play it was ninth v 14th and in the first half especially, it looked like it. It was bitty, scrappy, ugly, and included many of the worst elements of Long Throw Britain.
Oliver Glasner looked thoroughly fed up, his frustration evident in every wander to the edge of his technical area. Three minutes into the seven added minutes at the end, he sat down glumly, folded his arms, and seemed only with a great effort of will to be able to stand up and propel himself forward again, hands whirring as he yelled: “Four more minutes. Come on!” It felt a characteristically understated howl of despair.
On another day Palace might have nicked an equaliser – Justin Devenny and Maxime Lacroix both went close. On another day Kevin Danso might have been sent off for clipping Devenny’s heel as he ran clear in the fifth minute. But this never felt like their day; they were sluggish and uninspired, the toll of their European and Carabao Cup campaigns perhaps catching up with them. The uncertainty over Glasner’s future doesn’t help but on the evidence of the past couple of weeks, perhaps he has hit the realistic ceiling of where he can take them.
Not that Tottenham will care. When you’ve lost six of your previous 10 games, you’re not in a position to be choosy. And not that Archie Gray will care as he finally scored his first Tottenham goal on his 60th appearance. It says much for his precocious excellence that that still made him the youngest Tottenham scorer since Dele Alli on this ground nine years ago. Where Alli’s was a strike of notable brilliance, though, Gray’s, in keeping with the occasion, was nudged in from a couple of yards as Spurs won three headers in quick succession following a corner. If you can’t do anything with the second ball, at least make sure you’re winning the third balls.
Gray is 19 years and 291 days old (four days older than Alli was when he scored at Selhurst) and represents one of the obvious positives of his Tottenham squad. He’s already started 64 league games and it’s probably been to his benefit that Thomas Frank has used him more sparingly this season.
Plenty of players have been ruined by being overexposed too young and there seemed a real danger last season that he could be an indirect victim of Tottenham’s defensive injury crisis as he was forced to fill in as a makeshift centre-back in a team that was not noted for its defensive solidity.
But he’s come through that and now seems to be blossoming into the player it looked like he could be at Leeds. The goal is a statistic, no more, although his obvious delight at scoring and broad grin at the final whistle suggested how much it meant to him, but far more significant was his general contribution.
It was his pass inside the full-back that led to the cross for Richarlison’s second offside goal, but he had also supported Rodrigo Bentancur at the back of midfield. In that sense it was a classic performance from one of the midfield shuttlers, making his blocks and interceptions, but always ready to stride forward and distribute sensibly.
He and Lucas Bergvall could easily form the basis of the Spurs midfield for years, although Tottenham would need to find some more creativity in wide areas if their midfield three is ultimately to comprise a holder and two such hard-running players. And that perhaps is the problem for Frank. He has found another win and so, for now at least, quelled the mounting doubts, the sense of a team losing its way and its discipline that was so apparent against Nottingham Forest and Liverpool. But nobody could call this performance beautiful.
Whether that matters is perhaps subjective, but Tottenham are a club that, as trophies have eluded them, have come to value beauty. They might not win, is the self-consoling logic, but they do things the right way. Grinding like this is fine if it produces victories, particularly in the short term, but it means there is nothing to fall back on if results go awry. There is a cohort of Spurs fans sceptical of Frank purely because he came from Brentford; a diet of attritional long punts, grit and effort is only going to fuel their fears.
For now, though, Spurs can celebrate a Gray Christmas.
