NEC Nijmegen 0 Spurs 1: Youth, Youth, Youth

By: Sam | November 27th, 2008

Bloody shit do NEC have ugly shirts. Half torso green, half torso red, collar and sleeves black? This isn’t midieval times (You know shirts are damn ugly if I talk about them first). But oh yeah, that game. It was a Jamie O’Hara goal on fourteen minutes that made the difference, in all likelihood sending us through to the next round.

Due to my status as a miserable high school student I only managed to see the second half, but I can imagine the first was similar. Our dominance was clearly to be seen, as we’ve seen lately the midfield is doing an excellent job of distributing and pacing the attack. Huddlestone looks more in his element with every passing second, and Zokora did a fine job as well. The passing in and around the NEC half was for the most part exceptional, but the finish was lacking, hence the fact we only scored once.

Harry had made six changes from the side that beat Blackburn by the same scoreline on the weekend, the most noticeable of course was having Frazier Campbell starting up front. A successful decision, in my opinion. Let’s not forget that the goal came because he struck the bar and the ball was jumped on by O’Hara. Youth was without a doubt the theme of the night, with O’Hara and Campbell obviously playing vital roles, but also four academy players riding the bench, two of which got the chance to see some action late on, Jonathan Obika and Adam Smith. Congrats to those two.

Most importantly, however, our backline looked absolutely perfect. I often give Michael Dawson a hard time, but he was on the fuckin’ ball tonight, winning balls left and right. And that tackle Jonathan Woodgate made El-Kabir was a game-saver if I ever saw one. Gunter, however, made a few mistakes up and down the flank, but he has to learn, and matches like this are the perfect opportunity. I mean, we haven’t conceded for two matches in a row, something we haven’t done all season. It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t have a certain skinny corn-rowed Frenchman in your starting eleven.

So now we’ve got six points from three matches, tied with Udinese who have a game in hand. Spartak and Dinamo are now tied on three points after Spartak has done away with the Croats just now, and poor NEC has yet to register a point, but with two matches left to play. I daresay things are looking good for us to go through. And let’s suppose Spartak beats NEC at home next week, and Udinese beats Dinamo, that’ll leave the table looking like this: Udinese 9, Spurs 6, Spartak 6, Dinamo 3, NEC 0. You do the math/predictions. I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m just thankful that we got next week off so to not have to play five matches in two weeks.

As always, be sure to share your thoughts in the comments. Come on you Spuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurs!