How Did Tottenham Overcome West Brom Jinx?
By Ryan Wrenn
No one would refer to the Tottenham-West Brom rivalry in the same breath as the North London Derby, but there was plenty to be anxious about ahead of Saturday’s match.
Mauricio Pochettino lost to West Brom less than two months into his first season at Tottenham in 2014. While he followed that up with a 3-0 win the following spring, since then he’s only been able to eek out three consecutive 1-1 draws against the Baggies.
Draws are certainly better than losses, but given West Brom’s status as a perennially lower-mid-table club this is far from the ideal record.
What’s more, that last draw came in the fourth-to-last matchday of the 2015/16 season. Tottenham desperately needed all three points to stay in some kind of contention with Leicester City for the Premier League title. Though all hope would be lost in the following week’s 2-2 draw at Chelsea, it was West Brom’s hammer who took the first blow sealing Spurs’ coffin.
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Ahead of Saturday, Pochettino and his team might have felt a similar pressure to get a result. They were on a five match win streak, one that took them back into the Champions League spot and hinted at a possible title challenge. They needed to sustain their momentum, especially considering that they had Manchester City away just one week later.
And they did. Harry Kane struck in the 13th, 77th and 82nd minutes to complete his first hat-trick since the fall of 2015. West Brom defender Gareth McAuley got caught up in the spirit of things and contributed an own-goal off a Christian Eriksen shot.
Was this just sheer desire mixed with confidence at Tottenham? Or perhaps a deficiency in this up-to-this-point wildly overachieving, eighth-placed West Brom team?
No one would be blamed for assuming that, really, it was a matter of tactics. Pochettino’s revamped lineup once again set out in a 3-4-3 formation that seems to bring out the best in virtually every element of this squad.
The defense did more than just keep a clean sheet: they limited West Brom to just three shots in total over 90 minutes, none of which were on target. The midfield pair of Mousa Dembélé and Victor Wanyama recorded more passes between them than the entire West Brom starting XI. Kane, Eriksen and Alli combined as well as they’ve combined all seasons, and it paid off.
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That’s a fine and accurate analysis, but there’s a bigger takeaway. This team are once again doing their level best to excise the word “Spursy” from any football fan’s vocabulary.
They came close to doing that last season, right up until the draw at West Brom sapped their will and energy. Now, with both a hugely important win over Chelsea and this result on Saturday, Tottenham can move forward with even less niggling doubt over the quality of their claim to a spot in the title race.