Tottenham delay their crisis for at least another week with thumping win over Crystal Palace – The Warm-Up

THURSDAY’S BIG STORIES

An Encounter of Bivariate Segments

There are tougher jobs than writing about football. Playing football, for a start. But every profession has its struggles and The Warm-Up spends a great percentage of our time caught between two contrary forces: the desire not to use anything even a little bit like a cliché, and the fact that football is often a hugely clichéd thing.

One good reason why we’re not suggesting it is that Spurs came out in the second half and scored four unanswered goals. That’s right, it was a game of two halves. Sometimes football just cannot help itself. A little originality, we beg.

Oh, there’s probably a little more nuance to it than that. Spurs, perhaps aware that an eager nation was willing them into crisis, actually started pretty well. No real chances, but a fair amount of the busywork that comes before chances. But that faded as the goal failed to emerge, and by the time the half-time whistle came Palace were in the ascendancy and we were daydreaming about the mass burning of old-school Arsenal shirts. Use a bucket, lads, and have another bucket filled with water nearby. Be angry, fine. But be safe.

After the game, when he was asked about the difference between the two halves, Kane was keen to point to the fact that Spurs had in fact started okay. Perhaps he was being modest, or perhaps he hadn’t twigged; either way, what he could and maybe should have said was “Me”. In the first half, Kane looked like an ordinary footballer. In the second, he looked like the man who will be claiming every scoring record going, the most inevitable striker since Shearer. Back post, big header, 1-0. Touch to control, touch to finish, 2-0. And game. Perhaps Antonio Conte had got around behind him and flipped the big red switch from Kane to SuperKane.

There’s obviously nothing illegal about having an amazing forward that breaks games apart by being amazing. It’s a perfectly respectable way to win a football match. And it does give everybody else a bit of breathing space: Bryan Gil, for example, had a decent and enjoyable game that might have wholly forgotten had this ended with a narrow Palace win. As it is, Conte was free to compare him to Bernardo Silva and then instruct him to put some more muscle on his frame. The whole ‘consumptive poet desperately searching for a bottle of laudanum’ vibe does rather encourage defenders.

But if you’re fretting (or chortling) about Spurs’ broader problems, then the sight of Kane taking a couple of chances isn’t going to calm your nerves (or stop your chuckling). Perhaps this result will end up signalling the emergence of Gil and the return of Son Heung-min to something like his best. Or perhaps Crystal Palace folded like a paper palace in the rain. It’s unfair, but The Warm-Up always judges the health of Conte’s sides by his animation on the touchline. If he’s jumping into his own dugout with every goal, and screaming like a mad thing every time the opposition wins a throw-in, then all is well. If he’s brooding and nodding and barely responding, even to his side rattling them in, then something fundamental is still not quite right.

But where there’s Kane, there’s goals, and where there’s goals, there’s hope, and where there’s hope, there’s the chance of taking points off Arsenal in 10 days’ time. Now that really would annoy a good number of Arsenal fans.

Oh No, The Saints

The new manager bounce is a thing, but it’s not a hard and fast rule. Sometimes things don’t get any better, and it’s a new manager splat. And sometimes things seem to get worse, as if the new manager has hit the floor, gone right through the floorboards, and is now lying in a cellar saying “ouch”.

Southampton under Ralph Hasenhuttl this season: 14 games, 12 points, 12 scored and 24 conceded. Southampton under Nathan Jones: four games, zero points, three scored and nine conceded. We’re not trying to make a rigorous comparison there, our sample sizes are far too small for that. But we’ve already pencilled in splat, and we’re willing to move on to disaster at a moment’s notice. Certainly, Southampton’s fans are deeply unhappy, and are telling Jones so at every opportunity.

Although, in fairness, there’s a lot of it about at the bottom of the table. Nottingham Forest’s goal last night came after a poorly directed, underhit pass was intercepted around the halfway line; so too Brighton’s fourth against Everton on Tuesday. Coincidence, perhaps, but there’s something emblematic about goals like these. They seem to reveal a side’s deep dysfunction, to show us footballers that are ill at ease with the football they’re being asked to play.

Player 1: Why have you kicked it there? Player 2: Well, why weren’t you standing there? Both together: Oh look, they’ve scored.

If actually watching Southampton play football doesn’t bring much cause for optimism, then a look at the table offers a glimmer of hope. It may be time for the third round of the FA Cup already, but the World Cup means that we’re not actually as far through the season as it feels, if that makes sense. This kind of wintry despondency would normally be setting in with more games played. There’s still time to turn things around!

Or there’s still time for Southampton’s board to get nervous again, and get themselves a third manager for the season. Still time to refuse to panic, still time to panic hugely. The nature of relegation battles is such that you don’t necessarily need a big bounce. Just a bounce bigger than everybody else’s.

And We’re Back

After the most untraditional of World Cups, Serie A returned yesterday with one of its most charming traditions: the footballing feast of the Epiphany. Everybody plays, and they play all day. Salernitana vs. AC Milan kicked things off just after noon, ending with a win for Milan, and hours later Inter vs. Napoli started and finished in winter darkness.

Other traditions were also respected. Juventus, for example, were contained, frustrated and nearly denied their three points by Cremonese. But a bit of the old inevitability is returning, and Juve’s injury time winner was greeted, at least by The Warm-Up, with a roll of the eyes and a sigh. “Ah, of course. Juventus.”

Had Napoli won, and AC Milan lost, we’d be looking at an 11-point gap at the top of the table. And we’d probably be writing something very foolish like “surely not even Napoli can blow it from here.” Napoli, of course, can blow it from anywhere. But as it is, the lead is just five from AC Milan, with Juve and Inter two and three points further back respectively. Three gifts for the chasing pack; a lump of coal for the leaders. And a proper title race for the rest of us, to keep us warm through winter.

IN OTHER NEWS

Another great wintertime football tradition: one of the big Spanish teams gets thoroughly inconvenienced in the cup by some heroes from the lower leagues. CF Intercity couldn’t quite knock Barcelona out, but take them all the way to extra time, thanks to a hat trick of equalisers from Oriol Soldevila.

RETRO CORNER

On this day in 1963, the third round of the FA Cup kicked off. Well, some of it. Of the 32 games, only three went ahead, as much of England ground to a halt in the coldest winter since 1740. The last of the ties eventually happened on March 7, and the final replay on March 11; a good chunk of the fourth round had already taken place. Annoyingly, we couldn’t find any footage of games happening in the snow, so here’s Pathe News on the Big Freeze.

In the end, the final was only delayed by three weeks, which probably counts as a minor miracle. Manchester United beat Leicester City 3-1 thanks to a goal from Denis Law and two from David Herd, and we were able to find highlights of that.

HAT TIP

COMING UP

It’s Manchester City away at Chelsea, and it’s a moderately big one. A City win would cut Arsenal’s lead at the top to a mere five points; it would also leave Chelsea in tenth place, a long, long way from those Champions League places.

More Andi Thomas tomorrow. You’re welcome.