Tottenham defeated Newcastle United 4-1 over the weekend in the ideal way to avenge their London derby loss to West Ham United on Thursday.
Richarlison, Son Heung-min, and Destiny Udogie all scored at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, demonstrating Ange Postecoglou’s team’s return to form. Spurs’ winless streak, which dated back to the end of October, was snapped with the victory.
The remaining Christmas period will give the residents of North London some challenging matches; Nottingham Forest will play next, followed on December 23 by Everton’s visit to the capital. Luckily for Postecoglou, the concerns about injuries at Hotspur Way did not get worse over the course of the weekend.
Richarlison made his first start since the victory over Crystal Palace, and Pape Matar Sarr made his first appearance in the starting eleven since the 2-1 loss at Wolves.
Yes, Richy was excellent. extremely significant. “I felt like when Pape and him came in, it really energized us,” Postecoglou remarked. “I believe they did that because we needed it for today’s midweek match.
“Their general play was excellent but just their general energy was very good and obviously for Richy getting a couple of goals as a striker that was positive for him.
Even though players like Micky van de Ven, Eric Dier, Ivan Perisic, Manor Solomon, Rodrigo Bentancur, Ryan Sessegnon, Alfie Whiteman, and Ashley Phillips are not present, James Maddison, who was present on Sunday, is still not playing.
Postecoglou has acknowledged his players for persevering through the challenging phase of results, even though they are missing those important players. “Yeah, look, I have been struggling with that a little bit all week because we’re trying to build something here and part of that is through the tough periods to not allow the lads too much latitude in terms of excuses, but the reality is and I have probably been too hard on them in retrospect, but we got decimated after the Chelsea game, and it is no coincidence that now that we are getting some players back that we are starting to look a lot stronger,” he said in response to the question of whether the team was beginning to gel.
While I won’t speak for Eddie Howe, I can understand what he’s going through and know that in this league, losing one or two key players will make things difficult for you.
“You brought up James and Micky, but you left out Bentancur. Perisic was crucial to our late-game victories, and he was the one who provided Manor Solomon. I could write forever. Although it may sound like an excuse, this is the reality of the Premier League, and it doesn’t take a lot of analysis to see why our results over the past few weeks haven’t been as clear-cut as they were earlier in the year.
I’ve asked guys to analyze the performances, but I’m not sure how many positions Deki Kulusevski has held. We had Emerson playing center back, and Ben Davies has since changed his position to center back, so there is some reasoning behind why we let up a little.
“In the Premier League if you slip a little bit, that’s enough and hopefully we’re coming out the other side and just having Richy and Pape back today, making those two changes after a midweek game and Eddie couldn’t make any changes, I just felt we had more energy and legs and we needed it today.”
