West Ham 0-1 Spurs: Pochettino proves once again he’s working wonders with spare parts

 Spurs walked into East London and beat West Ham 0-1.

The statement “Spurs beat West Ham 0-1” probably won’t come as a surprise when you initially look at it. After all, Spurs have been one of the best teams in England for the last three years, with great players and a great coach, whilst West Ham are a car-crash of a club that doesn’t ever look like they know what they’re doing.

Yet, Spurs beating West Ham is not only a surprise, but a genuinely impressive feat!

A little context; Spurs signed no one in the summer. For the first year ever their summer transfer window was a total non-event with no one coming in despite their squad clearly lacking the depth needed to mount the kind of all-fronts challenge that Spurs’ consistent excellence now demands that they do.

Daniel Levy has said that they didn’t sign anyone because: “Mauricio Pochettino didn’t want to sign someone for the sake of it. He felt there were sufficient players in the squad,” which doesn’t really sound like something a coach as astute as Pochettino would say, but there you go.

So a Spurs side that needed to reinforce in a big bad way did nothing of the sort and enters another long, gruelling season with a squad that is too small to carry the load. Besides Son Heung-min and Moussa Dembélé, Spurs don’t really have anything in the way of true depth. Now, of course Spurs will still win games, but it’ll be very hard for them to genuinely challenge for a top trophy, which they badly want to do.

Meanwhile West Ham did the opposite and signed everyone. Like Gary Oldman barking in Lyon, their transfer activity seemed unhinged, dangerous almost. Yet Manuel Pellegrini is a true old master, and after a rocky start he has made the Hammers into a formidable force – especially at The London Stadium.

West Ham’s last three home games were against Chelsea, Macclesfield and Manchester United. They soaked up the pressure vs. Chelsea, not allowing them any space and drawing 0-0. They ripped Macclesfield a new hole in the EFL Cup with an 8-0 win. And then they beat Manchester United 3-1 just before the international break.

West Ham are a great home side, they are hard to handle. Yet when Spurs came to town this afternoon, Mauricio Pochettino’s men weren’t held like Chelsea, nor were they blown away like Macclesfield and Manchester United. Spurs comfortably held their own, stifled the West Ham attack, and then won it with a frankly wondrous goal in the first half.

What made the game winner so incredible was who created it: Moussa Sissoko. It’s obvious to anyone with eyes that Moussa Sissoko isn’t a Spurs-level player, not the Spurs that want to win things anyway. He works hard but he lacks the quality needed. Yet here he was producing exactly that kind of quality.

Sissoko raced away down the right (he did this a lot during the game) but instead of just running the ball out of play he turned back onto his weaker left-foot, leaving his marker flailing at thin air, and took a couple of touches before lifting a gorgeous cross in with that left-foot. It was a truly spectacular thing, a low-flat thing that just sort of soared in, onto the head of Erik Lamela who headed home.

That was special, as was the performance, in which West Ham were a stifled force and bar one amazing save Hugo Lloris was largely untroubled. Meanwhile Lukasz Fabianski had to have an impressive game to stop Spurs from extending their lead.

Doing that given West Ham’s form at home would have been impressive enough, but doing so with a small squad missing two of his most special talents in Dele Alli and Christian Eriksen (though the Dane came on for the last few minutes) is phenomenal

Everyone knows Mauricio Pochettino can make good talents great, but he can also do brilliant things with duff players given enough time. Just look at today; a hitherto useless squaddie produced a miracle assist and an inconsistent forward who lost literal years to injury came up with the winning goal. That’s quality coaching and nothing else.

For goodness sake, Spurs’ star striker played the whole game like he had one eye on the Champions League tie midweek, and such is Mauricio Pochettino’s excellence at getting the absolute most out of limited talents like Sissoko that Spurs never really felt it.

The post West Ham 0-1 Spurs: Pochettino proves once again he’s working wonders with spare parts appeared first on Squawka News.

From Squawka NewsSquawka News https://ift.tt/2NOPUyN