Six Tottenham players impressed during their victory over Manchester City and must be in Fabio Capello’s thoughts
So there will be an English manager in next season’s Champions League, at the head of an English team. An English team, moreover, that may well, if it follows night’s triumphant pattern, contain a majority of English players. You don’t have to be a member of some right-wing nationalist party to celebrate that possibility.
Tottenham Hotspur’s right to success against their rivals for fourth place and its potential rewards could not be disputed even when viewed through the bluest of filters. In a contest that was ceaselessly competitive and generally evenly balanced, Harry Redknapp’s players proved themselves to possess greater resilience and penetration.
Peter Crouch had messed up a better chance five minutes before Marton Fulop, in the night’s decisive moment, pushed Younes Kaboul’s cross on to his head. Manchester City now have the leisure at which to repent their decision not to trust their reserve strength but instead to persuade the Premier League to allow them to borrow a goalkeeper who had not played for his club since January.
How bitterly they should now regret allowing Joe Hart to spend the season on loan at Birmingham City. Hart has occupied himself over the past few months by demonstrating the talent that won the trust of Sven-Goran Eriksson during the Swede’s spell at Eastlands, recently persuaded his fellow professionals to vote him into their team of the year and has led him to the brink of the England party to travel to South Africa in the summer.
Unlike City, Spurs seem willing to trust the young Englishmen who have helped them negotiate a run-in that included those terrific victories over Arsenal and Chelsea in the space of four tumultuous days at White Hart Lane. After successfully winding up last night’s opponents – to the point of threats of legal action – with his mischievous tale of the alleged shenanigans surrounding the transfers of Craig Bellamy and Wilson Palacios in January 2009, Redknapp seemed to be making a rather more serious point to City when he unveiled his team sheet. The Spurs line-up contained no fewer than five serious contenders for England’s World Cup party, plus one increasingly credible outsider.
Crouch assured his place in Tottenham’s history by settling the match with the sort of opportunistic goal he scores for England, albeit usually in less significant fixtures, and it would be a great surprise were he and Jermain Defoe not to make it to South Africa. An exhausted Aaron Lennon, another probable, was withdrawn with 20 minutes to go, but had done enough to hint that, after a long absence, his sharpness is coming back. And the recent claims on behalf of Ledley King and Michael Dawson were certainly justified by their showing against Emmanuel Adebayor and Carlos Tevez on a night of such high stakes.
Knowing he would need King’s presence for this match, Redknapp took the risk of playing his captain against Bolton at the weekend. The state of King’s knees do not usually permit him to appear twice in a week, but the manager knew that if they lost to Bolton their chance of fourth place might be virtually over. The gamble paid off with a majestic performance last night, typified by the moment, midway through the second half, when King dived on to those much-punished knees to head Shaun Wright-Phillips’ cross away at the near post.
Dawson, in his turn, provided similar moments of staunchness. While not as polished as his partner, he cleared a brutal volley from Gareth Barry off the line and dealt efficiently with the physical presence of Adebayor throughout the evening.
And now perhaps even the outsider has a chance. Tom Huddlestone has not always punched his weight or pushed himself as close to the forefront as might have been imagined when he emerged as Derby County’s teenage colossus. At 23, he seems finally to have sealed his place as a complement to Luka Modric, a diminutive visionary who would have slotted into any Tottenham side. Given the task of using his range of passing to establish the rhythms and set others free, Huddlestone generally manages to disguise his lack of pace and mobility. It will be interesting to see how he takes to European football.
The Spurs bench, too, contained two players who, when Capello took over from Steve McClaren, might have hoped to see their senior international prospects blossom. Neither David Bentley nor Jermaine Jenas has ever managed to make the product match the potential, but their presence in the squad is a further reminder of the value of a commitment to English players.
City started both halves at full throttle but failed to make their efforts pay. On each occasion the storm lasted no longer than 10 minutes, at which point Spurs worked their way diligently into the game and began to threaten real damage. Once the heroic Heurelho Gomes had turned away Adam Johnson’s fierce 25-yard drive and scrambled Tevez’s deflected header away from the foot of the post in the first half, City’s effective assaults were few and far between.
Great football matches usually rest on a contrast of styles, but on this occasion two versions of good old-fashioned 4-4-2 produced a full-blooded and finely balanced match that fully reflected the nature of the encounter, a meeting between two teams whose contest for a single prize had brought them, after nine and a half months of struggle, to such a pulsating climax.
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