‘Embarrassing’ – Ex-Spurs Scout: Three things I learned from Tottenham win at Luton Town
Tottenham News is delighted to welcome aboard our brilliant new columnist Bryan King, the former goalkeeper who spent six years as a senior scout at Spurs and 28 years in total in first-team scouting roles. Bryan also spent eight years on Everton’s recruitment team and 11 years scouting at Aston Villa across two different spells.
A 10-man Tottenham battled to a 1-0 win over Luton Town at Kenilworth Road on Saturday 7 October to leapfrog Manchester City and go top of the Premier League.
After missing some big early chances and seeing Yves Bissouma sent off on the stroke of half-time for two bookable offences, some Spurs supporters would have been fearing the worst.
Nonetheless, Ange Postecoglou’s men showed tremendous character to take the lead early in the second half through Micky van de Ven, scoring his first goal for the club, and defend their advantage despite being down to 10 men.
Ex-Spurs scout Bryan King was watching on for Tottenham News and detailed three things he learned from the result.
The performances are concerning
Luton worked hard as a team and they did create chances against the team top of the league. It was a little bit worrying but when you’re at the top of the league these little 1-0 wins away at the likes of Luton are important. Everyone knew it was going to be hard, but if Tottenham could have got a goal in the first ten minutes it would have been a whole different ball game.
The game should have been dead and buried at half time, you can’t create that amount of chances and not score. In the first half, Tottenham had five good chances, clear chances, yet it was 0-0 at halftime, so they have certainly got to up their game a little bit.
I think Tottenham got out of jail today when the game really should have been over at halftime. Spurs allowed Luton to get back into it, they had good chances and could have scored not long after going behind.
A little bit concerned that a team such as Luton had as many chances as they did.
Yves Bissouma let Tottenham down
I can’t believe what he did, the referee was only five yards away from him. It was so obvious that he dived and when they showed it again in slow motion it was embarrassing, just embarrassing.
He could have kept on going but instead, he made it look as though he had fallen over, you don’t need that. One yellow card for a clumsy challenge, a second yellow card for a ridiculous dive. It started off as a positive run and all of a sudden he did that, I mean what comes into a player’s head to think he will get away with the free kick?
There were three players around him, if he had just moved left or right he would have gone into someone, but instead, all three players just threw their arms up in the air knowing what he had done. I didn’t like that at all and I bet the manager wasn’t happy.
Son Heung-min not at his best
It was a little bit worrying the way Spurs lost Son, he seemed to drift out of the game, and he is a player you want firing all the time.
He never seemed to have much of the ball. There was one moment in the first half when he set Pedro Porro up with a chance, but apart from that he just seemed to disappear which isn’t like him, he just couldn’t get in the game.
Against the likes of Luton, Burnley and Sheffield United, teams who defend deep, maybe they need to play with two upfront.
In other Tottenham news, Postecoglou has named two Under-21 stars who have “really stood out.”