Chadder View: Manchester City draw might prove to be the most important result of the season for Tottenham
Matthew Chadder is a lifelong Tottenham fan who grew up just down the road from his beloved club in North London. He’s now putting his passion for Spurs into words with a daily fan view for Tottenham News…
If you ever needed a confidence-boosting result, Tottenham and Ange Postecoglou got just that with their 3-3 draw against Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium.
When it rains it tends to pour over the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and, over the last few weeks, the weather has been torrential, to say the least.
Following 10 matchdays of clear skies and sunny temperatures, a series of injuries and suspensions saw a depleted Spurs team lose three games on the bounce, slipping from top spot in the Premier League to sixth place.
And with a trip to defending Premier League champions Manchester City next on the agenda, the weather forecast was once again a very miserable one for Tottenham.
Everyone, including myself, wrote us off. I spoke earlier this week about how we had absolutely no chance against the likes of Erling Haaland and Jeremy Doku, especially if Postecoglou insisted on playing his same style of football.
In the end, I was proved very wrong, and I am thankful that I was.
Now don’t get me wrong, we did get a lot of luck along the way, but sometimes in football and life, you create your own luck, which is exactly what I feel we did against City.
Yes, Haaland should have scored a few and yes they did hit the post on a couple of occasions, but at full-time we had registered the same number of shots on target as Pep Guardiola’s side and had it not been for some wastefulness in the final third, we could have perhaps created more.
What Postecoglou did was set down a marker, he showed that he is not afraid of any team in the division, and that is much more important than the point.
He could have taken my advice and sat back, but instead, he opted to go toe-to-toe with the champions and came out with a result, which will prove to his squad the belief he has in them.
When we look back at the end of the season, whatever happens over the next six months or so, this could prove to be the turning point in our campaign.
A loss would have made it four in a row, and suddenly the pressure would have been on the Australian. With home games against West Ham and Newcastle United to come, things could have got ugly.
Instead, Tottenham will now go into the match against West Ham full of belief, boosted by the return of Cristian Romero to the team, that they can turn their slump around while still playing their style.
Many were starting to question whether Postecoglou has a plan B, but his decision to bring off Bryan Gil at half-time on Sunday afternoon for Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg proves he does.
Giovani Lo Celso is beginning to start a quiet resurgence, with two goals in his last two appearances, as things ever so slightly start to look up for us.
The scenes at full-time told the story and if the club can build on this impressive result, we might just be able to survive this ‘mini-crisis’ after all and the grey clouds hanging over north London could start to finally clear.
In other Tottenham news, ex-Spurs scout Bryan King has detailed five things he learned from the result against City.