While some Spurs fans may have felt frustration and a sense of déjà vu at half time, others remained calm and felt certain that the goals would go in during the second period. That sense of calmness was admittedly helped by the lack of quality in this Villa side and while the hosts recovered in the last 45 minutes, the 4-0 victory was fully deserved.

After the match, Andre Villas-Boas praised a performance that included a first Premier League hat trick for Gareth Bale.

“It was a good performance from the beginning to the end,” said Andre on the club’s official website.

“The players were really up for it. They played so much good football in the first half that it was a little unfair that we arrived at half-time at 0-0.

“The players adapted well to Villa’s changes at half-time and all-round, for 90 minutes, it was an excellent performance both individually and collectively.”

If there is a justifiable criticism it could be directed at the poor delivery on most of the fifteen corners in the first half. However, it must be a big positive overall and particularly pleasing that Hugo Lloris and his defence have now kept three clean sheets in a row.

The result saw us sneak above Everton and into the top four on goals scored and next up is a trip to Sunderland on Saturday in another televised game.

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9 COMMENTS

  1. Possibly the most complete performance this season.
    At last a game we dominated from start to finish with no wobbly bits. I agree about our unimaginative and ineffective corners which certainly need some attention but this mustn’t detract from a great performance albeit against a poor and demoralised side.
    We do seem to struggle to unpicked packed defences which is a bit of a concern but our rapier like raids when Villa came out of their shell a bit in the second half explained why we’re quite lethal away from home.
    The upcoming Sunderland game will be a great test.

    • Disagree. Dominated from start to finish? Did you miss the start of the second half? It was becoming deja vu…until we scored. Was not a complete performance…but a 4-0 away win is a 4-0 away win. The article explains WHY it was not a complete performance. We dominated the first half, had 15 corners – from which none of our attempts on target came from. We need to find one or two guys who are willing to put effort in developing their corner taking. Why has Theo Walcott managed to develop an excellent corner delivery, yet Bale, Hudd, Dembele, Walker (who are all great strikers of a ball) cannot develop a reasonably consistent corner? Gallas and Walker did some dodgyness. Ade was opting to 1-2 it at every opportunity – even those that did not exist. Defoe did excellently for his goal, and a couple of other moments – but the front two are not clicking with the rest of the team in order to break down the opposition. For me, it is another 3 points, but still wondering where the performance level is. Without BALE, we would have struggled to break them down – despite excellent support work from Defoe, Lennon, Siggy on the goals.

        • Absolutely agree with Yidango, what were you hoping for, top of the league?! Ade is playing well for me and being very unselfish in his work for the team, last year, we were set up for him to score the goals (which he did), this year, Defoe is the man we are asking to ‘put the ball away’, Ade is working hard further back on the pitch. Agree with you regarding the corners, delivery is inconsistent and probably needs looking at, but all in all it’s been a good 1st half of a season, if we could bring in just one player in Jan, I would like someone to add competition to both Azza and Gareth, as when either one of them is out, we struggle massively.
          Apart from that, I’m happy with how we look, defence finally seems to be settled and comfortable together, Hugo is quality, and we still have Kaboul to come back – happy days.
          Finally, excellent to see Scotty P back, I genuinely feel that if shutting up shop is the way AVB wants to go, then Scott coming off the bench to sit alongside Sandro is what we need, all due respect to Livermore, he just ain’t in the same class as Scott.
          COYS

  4. Have to say I agree completely with tony rich on most points. We’ve employed a guy to bring us forward and do people truly think we have ? I’m not so sure. I’m finding it hard to enjoy possession football with no cutting edge. We are carrying Ade at the moment. He looks leggy, uninterested and unfit . Did he pass the ball to defoe once or was if twice? It’s so obvious to me that we need a number 10 to link us together and make us play togther. This talk of snejder cannot be completely untrue can it? He is the exact player to get us top 4 .

    • Lets talk facts here.. We go to Villa park play against a team that’s just been beaten 8-0 so understandably they play 10 men behind the ball with only their keeper stopping us going in at half time 3 possibly 4 up. (Lloris didn’t have a save to make)..
      In the second half being the home team Lambert as I’m sure AVB was anticipating set Villa up more offensively.
      During the 8 mins that they attacked us we played on the break and hit them with two quick sucker punch goals and then went on to continually dominate the game and finish the match 0-4..
      To me that is an all round quality performance, how some of you people see it any different is beyond belief!!
      As for Bale HE IS A Spurs player! Just as Messi is Barca, RVP was Arsenal’s now Man U’s, Ronaldo is RM’s
      Ba is Newcatle’s etc, etc.
      Honestly some of you so called football fans ain’t gotta a clue..
      Stick to playing Football Manager.

  5. Great performance overall. Downside for me is too the corners. Most teams would have scored if they had 10 corners, let alone 15. Most teams would have hit the target at least once from every 5 corners. If it was Man U, city, Liverpool etc they’d won the game just on the amount of wasted corners we had. Ok exaggerated a bit but we need to practice our corners, we get corners more than every other team and yet we might as well not have it as it makes no difference.

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