Newton had a good game. The weaknesses were failing to boss the midfield from the beginning; failing to play at a fast enough pace and failing to play high enough up the field.
To his credit when MA brought on DJ as the third striker it was intially at the expense of the midfield. When he saw that was not working well enough he brought off Mattock so we played 3-4-3 and it was effective in terms of the possession we had and the chances that were being created. Even though we didn't we always looked, in the last 30 mins, as if we would score a goal!
We have a strong 'spine' of N'Gotty, Clemence and de Vries. I think once the team starts to 'gel' around this spine we will see tighter passing, more movement into space. This team does have a clue. It will get better. The goal was our fault for watching the ref not the ball. If the situation had been reversed we would have given the team huge grief if we had not done exactly the same thing.
25 000 in the stadium wanted us to win. We did not win. We were beaten by a newly promoted team. Spurs were beaten by a newly promoted team. It is not the end of their quest for a top 6 place, nor is it the end of ours.
We played well enough for 60 mins to genuinely say we did not deserve to lose. I am probably too biased to say we 'easily' deserved to win.
I am very confident that from what I saw today we will score a lot of goals and beat a lot of teams. I never felt like that last season, and we probably do not have our strongest team out yet!
