An extremely important Champions League fixture for Tottenham, ends with a win over their Dutch opponents, which dumped PSV out and keeps Tottenham’s hopes of qualifying alive.
Spurs conceded a goal within the first two minutes of the match via a corner from Pereiro, which was headed in by the captain (L De Jong 2’) who managed to escape his marker, rise highest and finish a neat header into the bottom corner. After this awful start you could tell by the players reactions, that it spurred them on to control the game and dominate. Spurs managed to do that by having the majority of the possession, leaving PSV to sit back and defend, which led to them dealing with an immense amount of pressure, but they dealt with it tremendously well. Their defenders put their bodies on the line at all opportunities in order to deny Tottenham any chance of scoring a goal. This did lead to a massive corner count, which gave Tottenham their closest chance of them game, a header by Davinson Sanchez fell to the returning Dele Alli, who improvised and flicked the ball on, only for the ball to be cleared off the line by one of PSV’s outstanding performers of the night JoséTasende. With Eindhoven being on the back foot for the whole of the first half after their quick start, it meant their keeper had to be on top form, in which he was after being forced into a double save after a Tottenham break, but nothing came from it.
Going into the second half, Spurs knew that they had to put in an outstanding performance, because being 1-0 down meant that their Champions League dream was over if they did not come back and win. They started the second half brightly, but, Lucas Moura, the star man of the first half was substituted 17 minutes in for Erik Lamela, which the fans weren’t best pleased with. However, as Tottenham kept piling the pressure on to the tough defence of PSV, they finally broke through via their captain. Harry Kane scored (78’) handing Tottenham a lifeline, he scored with 12 minutes to go by hitting a left footed shot from just inside the box to the bottom right corner, assisted by a neat Llorente touch (SUB 75’).
This pumped up the crowd. You could really hear them getting behind their team to try and bag that all important second goal. They were pushing forward at all chances they got, but they got hit on the break after D Malen (SUB 73’) of PSV broke through on goal after taking a wonderful touch, but shot straight at Gazzaniga who pulled off what seemed a pretty routine stop in the 82nd minute. Llorente then had an attempt on goal a couple of minutes later, the net was waiting to bulge as Winks delivered a brilliant ball into the box,but his header was straight at the keeper. Luckily 6 minutes remained in the second half for Tottenham to put everything on the line to win. PSV threw another substitute on, a defensive change which was deemed to be a clever decision by the PSV Eindhoven manager, but it didn’t work. Tottenham worked the ball well down the left side of the pitch, which resulted in a cross by the left back, Ben Davies. This was his best delivery of the night and my word did it pay off, Kane (89’) got on the end of the cross and managed to header it towards goal, it took an unlucky deflection and dribbled into the back of the net. The crowd went wild, the players went wilder, the captain just scored an exceptionally important goal as it has kept Tottenham’s Champions League dream alive.
