Matchday Live: Monaco vs Tottenham

It would be cliched and slightly wrong to say this match is poised on a razor’s edge.

While the two teams have looked more or less equals in the center of the pitch, there’s one stat that stands out: Monaco have registered 10 shots — six on target — compared to precisely zero shots from Tottenham.

There’s no getting around just how terrible that is. Dele Alli, Harry Winks and Heung-min Son are doing their best to move the ball into dangerous positions, but when it gets to where it’s going it rarely finds anyone there to take the shot.

Harry Kane has looked almost completely isolated and whiffed the one opportunity he had. Son and Alli, great on the edge of Monaco’s third, aren’t doing anything in or around the penalty area.

Tottenham is the better team in the center of the pitch though. The task for the second half is to translate that dominance into some kind of quality in attack.

Dier will be thankful that Falcao’s penalty shot was weak enough for Lloris to save with ease. It might have been more representative of the first half had that penalty been converted, but Tottenham will take what they can get.

Plugging the leaks in the defense is importantly, but Tottenham desperately need to find a way around, through or above Monaco’s centre-back pair. They bedeviled them in the first match in September and they’re doing so again here.