Spurs continued their round of pre-season friendlies with a 1-1 draw against Swindon Town last night and despite the largely irrelevant outcome, the result sparked a mixed reaction on Social Media.
Tottenham fielded two very different XI’s in each half with a mixture of youth and experience but the goal in the first period came from a familiar source with Gareth Bale slotting home after picking up Gylfi Sigurdsson’s through ball.
Swindon equalised with a deflected shot on 79 minutes and after the game, Head Coach Andre Villas-Boas said that he was satisfied with the overall performance.
“We had some good chances and the result could have been different, but overall we had good, positive moments to take from the game,” said AVB.
“Overall, it was a good first show from everyone and congratulations to Swindon, they played well.”
Andre also intimated that the game had more to do with training and fitness although he did acknowledge that there were things to work on.
“We haven’t stopped training and that’s a good thing for our physical stamina during these games,” he added.
“We’ll continue to use 45-45 minutes to get everyone to a level that’s good for resistance, stamina and endurance.”
Pre-season now moves on to a Friday night game with Colchester but are you disappointed with the result or is it just an irrelevance ahead of the new campaign?
I was at the Swindon match and although in a competitive match 1-1 would have been highly disappointing there were many youngsters playing, and bar 3 or 4 players the 2nd half saw a second string side who performed well against a good Swindon side (which don’t forget has a few Spurs players in it). I thoroughly enjoyed watching the younger players get a run out, and never for one minute expected a high scoring performance in the first run out for the team in pre-season. Dempsey and Adebayor were both absent which limited Spurs striking options somewhat, with Defoe and Bale both playing together in the first half. I think some fans forget that if the younger players didn’t get these chances in pre-season we may never of seen the likes of Ledley King or Nick Barmby.
I don’t take too much notice of pre-season friendly results as they should be seen as an extension to the training programme.
After all look what happened under Martin Jol – we won virtually every pre-season friendly, but did’nt get a win in the prem for about 4 or 5 games into it.
I’d rather we picked up the points once the season starts and not worry about pre-season results.