Tottenham Double Up on Manchester City

After beating Manchester City 4-1 back in September at White Hart Lane, Tottenham would travel to the Etihad Stadium and look to claim another three points over the Citizens.

For the first time since May 5th, 2010, Tottenham visited the Etihad Stadium and left there with three points after five attempts. A very slow game for the most part, started to pick up in the second half with three goals all changing the momentum for both teams.

A 2-1 scoreline is a massive win for Spurs to not only trail Leicester City by two points for first place after the Foxes suffered a 2-1 loss to Arsenal earlier in the day. But to stay ahead of the Gunners on goal difference with both North London clubs winning.

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Opening the game’s scoring was Tottenham who were awarded a penalty kick. The call from referee Mark Clattenburg was questionable at best. On TV, two replays didn’t give a definite answer if it clearly hit Raheem Sterling’s arm/elbow or not. And with Sterling jumping backwards into a Danny Rose cross, he wasn’t able to see where the ball would land.

In the end though, after the call was given there was nothing that Manchester City could do except hope that Joe Hart would be able to save Harry Kane’s penalty attempt. And by going right down the middle on his kick, Kane put Tottenham ahead 1-0 13 minutes into the second half.

Twenty-one minutes later, Manuel Pellegrini’s decision to bring on Kelechi Iheanacho for Fernando in the 66th minute, paid off as his side was able to get a deserved equalizer after the team felt hard done by Clattenburg’s decision to award a penalty to Tottenham in the first place.

With Man City trailing in the game, Pellegrini had to change tactics after the opening 45 minutes saw his side mostly defend with brief spells of possession to look for a goal. Not that there’s anything wrong with a team playing defensively for an entire first half after suffering many injuries at midfield leading up to today’s game.

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But by going with this specific game plan, it left the Citizens with an entire half plus stoppage time to get the win. And for the most part of this match-up, both teams more or less cancelled each other out.

After 81 minutes it looked as if this game would go in two different directions: down to the wire and a win for either club, or a draw. For Mauricio Pochettino though, instead of settling for a draw and one point, he opted to go for the win and take all three points.

Pochettino would decide to take Dele Alli off for Érik Lamela with the 19-year-old racking up plenty of minutes and appearances this season since making the step up from League One to the Premier League. That, in of itself, might not be the exact reason why Alli was subbed off, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see this move as a way to give Alli some kind of rest.

With Érik Lamela on the pitch, the Argentine winger would provide a much needed pace to stretch a tired out Manchester City defense that had to go on the attack to get an equalizer in the 74th minute. Just nine minutes later after momentum had shifted to Manuel Pellegrini’s side and the Etihad Stadium getting louder with Iheanacho’s goal, silence would soon take over as Lamela would deliver a perfect through ball for Christian Eriksen who netted the game-winning goal in the 83rd minute.

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Four minutes of stoppage time would see Man City go back on offense and get plenty of chances to score another equalizer but a Hugo Lloris save in the 95th minute helped seal the win for Tottenham. In a game where Harry Kane and Dele Alli were mostly neutralized and taken out by Manchester City, Tottenham were still able to get a much needed win and three points.

Mauricio Pochettino may have said that City is “an important but not decisive game“, and that might still hold through with 12 games and 36 points left to play for. But it can’t be understated how different the mood would have been in the locker room if Spurs drew or lost to Manchester City instead after Leicester City fell to Arsenal just hours before Spurs’ game started.