EYEWITNESS: Dan Carrier's view on Tottenham Hotspur 0 Aston Villa 0

PREMIERSHIP: SPURS 0 ASTON VILLA

EYEWITNESS report from WHITE HART LANE

By DAN CARRIER

 

IT is not often you’ll hear Spurs fans vocally agreeing with Arsene Wenger, but 36 minutes into this tight clash, the Spurs fans taunted O’Neill’s charges with rounds of ‘Boring, Boring Villa,’ a reference to the Arsenal manager’s recent accusations that the Villa side were a long ball team. 

 

Yet the question which has to be asked is whether Spurs, with Peter Crouch leading the line, can be all too often a one trick team - exactly what their visitors tonight were accused of. It would be doing the ball players in the side a great disservice if the accusation that it’s all Spurs have got, but with Crouch cementing his place in the starting 11 to the degree that Robbie Keane felt it best to pursue first team opportunities north of the border, the ball to the lamp post in the number 15 shirt is a regular feature - and one that is not always successful, as today’s result shows.

 

With the team feeling the points pinch in recent weeks, and chances not being taken in games when possession statistics suggest they could have been won at a canter, perhaps Harry should consider playing five in the midfield, pushing Kranjcar and Modric further forward to play behind Defoe?

 

Thankfully, Spurs have recently been in an uncharacteristically mean mood at the Lane, with it now being 537 minutes  since Gomes has had to pick the ball out of the net in a top flight game. And Villa are equally uncompromising: going into today’s clash, they’d kept three clean sheets on the spin. Looking at both keepers, its hardly surprising. Gomes has settled now, and Friedel’s abilities as a top class shot stopper have never been questioned. Both showed their mettle in the first half, with Friedel stopping a Huddlestone stinger and defying Modric, then claiming the pick of the bunch on 41 when his athletically pulled off a one handed stop from Defoe. Gomes was rarely troubled, but when he was, he showed similar form, with a spectacular  save from Milner and Agbonlahor. 

 

And O’Neill’s charges are a yardstick by which to  judge this Spurs team by: taking points off those also knocking on the Champions League door is a vital measure of whether Harry’s charges genuinely mean business. Squadwise, it looks like it: David Bentley found his name on the team sheet for the fourth game in a row. His performance against Leeds in the FA Cup during the week won him plaudits, but it’s the business end of the season where the onus is on the winger to prove that he can be a vital member of the squad, and with Lennon still at least two weeks away from fitness, Bentley’s form is vital.

 

His little spell in the first XI has come at an opportune time of the year. His contract was surely in Harry’s January out tray before Lennon’s injury, while the same could be said of the rejuvenated Gareth Bale. Redknapp himself admitted as much in his programme notes. He justified his Monday transfer deadline day business by explaining how hard it was keeping members of the squad happy when they were spending week in week out on the bench. “It is a problem keeping so many international players happy when they are used to playing but then find they are not in the team on a regular basis,” he admitted over the loan deals struck for Keane, Hutton, Dos Santos, O‘Hara and Naughton.

 

Among those names could easily have been Bentley’s and Bale, who both played key roles today.

 

Villa started the stronger in the second period and began to move forward, a trait they’d not previously shown in the first 45: but O’Neill’s new found sense of second half adventure also had the effect of spaces opening up where previously things had been congested, and once Spurs had survived an early onslaught, they too started to threaten. 

 

On the hour mark Spurs cranked things up: the best of the sparring was provided by a Crouch flick, a Defoe touch and a Huddlestone drive that again Friedel was equal to.

Bentley tested the mettle of Villa’s back four on 74 with a cross shot. From the resulting corner, Dawson sent a header narrowly wide. Still the chances came as Villa tired, Crouch being denied from 18 yards by another brilliant piece of keeping by Friedel with 10 to go. Defoe was again denied, as was Bale and Crouch as things got desperate. 

 

Boring, Boring, Villa rung out at the end, a measure of the frustration felt. But another draw having had oodles of possession does beg the question: would we be a little more prolific, and a little less predictable, if Crouch started on the bench? 

 

 

Spurs:

Gomes, Bale, Bentley, Huddlestone, Palacios, Modric, Crouch, Defoe, Dawson, Corluka, King (Capt).

Subs:

Alnwick, Kaboul, Jenas, Gudjohnsen, Bassong, Kranjcar, Walker.

 

Aston Villa: 

Friedel, Young, Dunne, Downing (Sidwell, 87), Young, Milner, Agbonlahor, Heskey (Carew, 21), Petrov (Capt), Cuellar, Collins.

Subs:

Guzan, Sidwell, Carew, Delfouneso, Davies, Delph, Beye.