We’ve seen a lot of Dr Tottenham over time that it felt disorienatingly complicated to see the error-strewn boot on the opposite foot.
Dr Hoffenheim could sound like a second-tier Bond villain, nevertheless it was a vastly welcome appointment for a Spurs group stumbling blindly towards complete disaster in the league but in some way, inexplicably and sometimes regardless of themselves, nonetheless presently on target for glory on all different fronts.
Whereas this whole match felt very very similar to a 90-minute model of the Two Spider-Man meme, let’s begin with the very actual positives for Spurs.
Most clearly, this can be a win that retains a top-eight Europa League end in their very own arms. Beat Elfsborg – who’ve misplaced all three of their away video games up to now – on the ultimate matchday and Spurs are there.
That may be big, clearly. First, no group on earth is at the moment much less in want of two extra fixtures than injury-ravaged Spurs.
However there’s additionally the difficulty of when these two video games can be performed. Spurs already face a doubtlessly season-defining 4 days in opposition to Liverpool within the Carabao and Aston Villa within the FA Cup. Each legs of the Europa League play-off spherical can be performed within the 10 days that observe, both aspect of a relegation six-pointer within the league in opposition to Manchester United.
Spurs, it completely goes with out saying, don’t want a two-week spell that caries the very actual prospect – probability, even – of ending each single constructive factor about their season and go away solely the relegation battle left to battle.
They need to – ought to – now a minimum of keep away from that.
And there have been different positives tonight. Spurs began this recreation beautifully. They opened the scoring good and early with the kind of transfer we’d like to see them attempt only a bit extra typically.
Pedro Porro’s lengthy go – not lengthy ball – was very good, and matched by the contact and end from James Maddison. There have been echoes of Lucas Bergvall’s goal against Liverpool in the Carabao semi-final first leg right here.
Porro has that TAA-like long-range defence-splitter in his locker and it’s such a great possibility for a Spurs group that too typically needs to go groups to demise however succeeds solely in permitting their opponents to regroup and shut them down.
The second and third objectives are actually objectives that can have appeared very acquainted to Spurs followers, their group having made conceding such objectives an artwork kind over a number of a long time.
It was horrendous from Hoffenheim, it needs to be mentioned. Particularly the timing of them. Spurs’ second purpose got here simply as Hoffenheim seemed to be getting over the opener, however a no-pressure 10-yard midfield go went horribly awry and Spurs had been away. Son Heung-min supplied one of many much less convincing finishes of his profession and was lucky to see a deflection go away the floored keeper a slow-motion spectator.
Spurs’ third was simply as a lot of a present quickly after Hoffenheim had, as they’d threatened to do all through the second half, lowered the deficit and put the world’s most collapsible soccer group beneath all-too acquainted stress.
One other midfield snafu, one other fast Spurs break, and this time a shift-and-shoot end that was rather more just like the previous Son Heung-min, the one all of us knew and beloved. Maybe one other large constructive for Spurs there; whereas Son’s common play did nothing much to suggest his recent alarming decline can be reversed, the actual fact he ended the evening with two objectives and one in every of them so expertly taken can’t be ignored.
Different positives got here the way in which they normally do for Spurs lately, from the children. Archie Grey and Lucas Bergvall proceed to impress on this unrelenting baptism of fireside, whereas Mikey Moore stepped off the bench to supply an help as he did among the wreckage of Spurs’ abject performance at Everton final week.
And now, alas, the inevitable negatives. Within the Premier League, it’s been a recurring theme that Spurs merely can not win a recreation except they achieve this with a lot room to spare that not even they’ll f*** it up. They haven’t gained many Premier League video games, however after they do it’s by big margins. Solely as soon as have they gained by lower than three objectives. And that was by two objectives.
Within the Europa League it’s been barely totally different, with a great few one-goal wins. However these have additionally been unnecessarily fraught and twice now featured a two-goal deficit being halved late on. This was not a compelling instance of a Spurs group newly capable of see a recreation out.
They spent many of the second half parking a Jose Mourinho bus on the sting of their very own penalty space. One questioned if this was some type of f*** you from Ange, however there does exist a middleground between 11 males behind the ball and 10 males in entrance of it. What we’d like to see is Spurs truly placing a few of their gamers in mentioned middleground.
They conceded two unhealthy objectives, might have conceded extra, and wanted VAR to (belatedly if appropriately) intervene to overturn a penalty resolution simply as Andrej Kramaric was beginning his run-up.
Simple and proper to say that’s simply the kind of factor you’d count on to see in a recreation between these two groups; Tottenham and their non-union German equal.
The opposite large and apparent downside for Spurs is that, conservatively, 9 of the gamers who put themselves and Spurs followers by way of the wringer right here should do all of it once more in three days’ time.
Antonin Kinsky will presumably return in purpose having been ineligible right here. However the one different seemingly change can be a return to the beginning XI for Djed Spence, who wasn’t registered for this competitors firstly of the season.
That this made excellent sense in September however appears fully insane in January is simply one of many many, many indicators of simply how absurd this Spurs season has develop into.