Tottenham, Moura top Huddersfield in BPL
By Aaron Coe
A Lucas Moura hat-trick powers a heavily rotated Tottenham over Huddersfield Town pushing Spurs back into third-place in the Premier League, tightening a grip on spot in next season’s Champions League.
Following four losses and a tie over a 5-game stretch, Tottenham Hotspur have seemingly righted the ship as Spurs won their second straight game in League and third in three at the New Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Saturday afternoon over Huddersfield Town 4-0. Injuries to both Harry Kane – likely for the season – and Dele Alli – hopefully for not as long – were already forcing Mauricio Pochettino’s hand.
Those 10-men were all in front of Hugo Lloris, which was almost a surprising start today. Lloris has been playing well – ask Sergio Aguero – but if Gazzaniga was going to get any more chances between the sticks this season, baring an injury to Lloris of course, this was the match. Alas, Mauricio Pochettino elected to stay with the hot hand in goal and team captain, which is never a bad thing.
The First Half
Tottenham was dominant in almost every statistical category in the first-half, holding about ~70% of the possession, taking 8 shots to Huddersfield’s two, and completing an incredible 401 passes at a 91% rate. Even with that statistical dominance and a team clearly not willing to pressure Tottenham in possession it took the mixed-up squad a bit to get going. It was at about 10 minutes when Victor Wanyama took the crowds advice and shot a loose-ball he had collected just a couple feet wide of the far post from near the top of the box.
Spurs were finally finding Llorente as a target man up front and even when he was not fully possessing the ball, his presence and the attention it was drawing made running off him a real danger to the Terriers defense. This presence led to the breakthrough on 24 minutes.
Ben Davies had collected the ball on the left and as Moura broke down the line, space opened for Davies to go more direct to Llorente near the top of the box. An alert, goal-scoring midfielder would see this kind of action and start breaking and normally that is Dele Alli for Spurs. On this day here came Victor Wanyama sprinting from out of the midfield toward the box. Llorente collected and turned with the ball all in one motion – to be honest I’m not sure he ever touched the ball – as Wanyama ran past effectively taking-over possession in 1-on-1 with Ben Hamer on goal.
With two touches that would make ANY striker envious Wanyama calmly rounded Hamer and then tucked the ball into the empty net. If we didn’t know any better, you’d think Wanyama was a striker who had been playing all season – not a defensive midfielder making only his second Premier League start of the season. Outside of a brief ankle injury scare, Wanyama played well on the day overall, boding well for what remains of the season and potentially the summer ahead.
Just over two-minutes after Wanyama had put Spurs up 1-0, Moura had Tottenham cruising at 2-0. Juan Foyth applied ball pressure and won it at midfield playing into Moussa Sissoko. As Sissoko has done virtually all season, he drove hard with the ball toward the opponent’s goal. Sissoko’s performance between the 18’s this season has been a revelation for Spurs and France.
If we have a complaint about Moussa’s play it has been that lacking final ball. That wasn’t the case today as Sissoko laid a wonderful little pass out into space in front of a charging Lucas Moura on the right from just outside the penalty area. Moura made no mistake with the platter he was served and buried a low shot into the far post past Hamer 2-0 Spurs.
Two shots on target, two goals, 2:24 of time elapsed, it was a good couple minutes for Spurs. Following that excitement outside of a missed opportunity for Jon Stankovic and town following the only corner of the half, the first 45 minutes ended.