Tottenham suffered their first defeat of the pre-season, as they lost to Celtic on Sunday, having scraped a draw with Barcelona on Friday night. The fact that we failed to beat either side, despite the fact that neither played a full strength side, is quite worrying.
It’s true though that part of the reason we struggled was due to several injuries to our central defenders and strikers. Overall, here’s what we learned from the tournament.
1. All football teams should play like Barcelona. Even their kids have the ability to play flowing one-touch football, that is a joy to watch and extremely difficult to play against.
2. Bent will always miss more chances than he scores. Pavlyuchenko looked no more energised, having had a rest this summer. We really need to flog at least one of them.
3. Huddlestone has the space to spray the ball around, when employed in the centre of defence. Unfortunately, he and Corluka are too slow to be paired against Fernando Torres and Liverpool on the first day of the season.
4. Poor Jamie O’Hara is not a left winger. A lot of people moan about his lack of ability, but he’s not helped by being constantly played out of position.
5. The youngsters looked OK. Livermore grabbed a goal against Barca and made some decent forward runs against Celtic. Danny Rose looked like a decent enough left wing option, if we don’t manage to sign someone during the summer. John Bostock played a beautiful ball across the face of goal against Celtic, that Defoe failed to convert and looks physically strong enough to play at the top level.
6. We might have had a better chance in this tournament if we’d played the rubbish Egyptian side.
Here are some highlights, if you can bring yourself to watch them again.
