**1\. Who We Are, Mate**
After losing at home to the bottom side and then tonking the champions away, I suppose it actually made perfect sense that our heroes spent the entirety of yesterday lurching wildly between rip-roaring attack and what you might call pretty vacant defending. In short, every time either side attacked – in fact, every time either side won possession – they looked like they might score, and once we’d got past all the VAR calls and shots off the woodwork and other-worldly saves, we might have had a scoreline of around 8-8.
To suggest that this approach is universally popular would seem to misread the mood about the place somewhat. Here at AANP Towers, naturally, we lap it up, but there are plenty who cross their arms in disgust and give tongue to a few choice complaints, in increasingly irate tones. No point entertaining if we’re not going to win anything, is, I understand, the gist of the objection.
Not that Our Glorious Leader is about to budge on the matter, judging by his post-match remarks, in which he essentially tossed into the nearest bin the very concept of grinding out some 0-0s and 1-0s to ensure qualification. Entertaining football remains very much the key ingredient where he is concerned, so we can expect last night’s madness to be bottled up and uncorked on a bi-weekly basis for the foreseeable. AANP will be at the front of the queue.
**2\. Forster**
Poor old Vicario deserves to have a medal pinned to his chest at some point, for playing a full hour with a snapped ankle at the weekend, in what was quite the commendation of the virtues of adrenaline.
The upshot of it all was that Fraser Forster was shoved into the spotlight for his 90-plus yesterday. Forster, of course, is a lad who Nature started building but then got distracted and forgot to stop, with the result that he is about two persons’ worth shoved into one. This at least makes him a handy chap to have around at corners, with any dastardly opposition plans to buffet him _à la_ Vicario unlikely to bring home much fruit.
The narrative doing the rounds was that being built like a small oak was all well and good, but Forster would come a cropper the moment he was required to rearrange the feet and do a spot of short-passing-from-the-back. The air was therefore thick with anticipation when the goal-kicks started flowing and Forster obediently played short, but anyone hoping to point a triumphant index finger at him and scream, “See? I knew it!” was to be left a little disappointed. We did butcher several of those play-out-from-the-back routines, no doubt about it, but in truth Forster was not really the culprit.
One would not say he was particularly inept in this field. Not particularly sensational either, for one must take the balanced view. But rumours of his inadequacy with ball at feet were evidently over-played. Forster popped the ball left and right (mostly left, actually), accurately and sensibly enough, and Davies and chums got on with things.
As mentioned, things went awry thereafter, on a pretty regular basis in the first half, but this seemed to be down to the infuriatingly flippant attitude of others in lilywhite, who seemed convinced that Roma players would obligingly look the other way and allow the ball to be played around them. Forster himself seemed accurate and sensible enough with his passing.
More of a pre-match concern to AANP had been Forster’s shot-stopping. Working on the rationale that an enormous oak, when sawn off at the base, will take a good, elongated second or two to fall to earth, I gnawed a slightly nervous fingernail at the prospect of Forster being called into lightning-quick reflex activity. Toss the ball high into the crowd and Forster is your man, went my thinking; fire a shot low to his sides, and things might get sticky.
Those fears were hardly assuaged by the first Roma goal. Although directed high rather than low, it nevertheless stood out as a moment of ignominy for our resident giant, as rather than skip across his line to engineer a position closer to the ball, he opted to leave his feet planted firmly where they were, and sought to remedy matters from a standing start. Well, it did not take an expert in the field to see that this approach was laced with difficulty, even for one standing at approximately nine foot eight. Forster’s leap amounted to little more than a footnote, he getting nowhere near the ball. Those pre-match concerns about his agility, or lack thereof, played on repeat and with some extra volume.
However, the strangest plot twist unfurled thereafter, for on the following occasions on which he was called into shot-stopping action, with activity requiring a far sharper grip on things than that goal, Forster suddenly donned a cape and revealed himself actually to be possessed of superhuman reflex-saving quality.
One shot towards the end of the first half seemed almost to be behind him, and travelling along the ground. And when I state it was travelling on the ground I do so not merely to pass the time. To move from the thinner parts of the atmosphere, which Forster’s upper parts inhabit, down to the floor, would require most of us to descend a flight or two of stairs, a procedure that would take some time to effect. By contrast, Forster somehow flung himself this great distance and direction in the absolute blink of an eye, shooting out an appendage whilst doing so, to pull off a save that any physics student would goggle at.
He was at it again, at the end of the second half, with a save that ought to have won us the game, only for the resulting corner to bring their goal. Whilst not so low down, this one was still a shot from close-range, and still of the ilk that one would expect to bypass such a large and cumbersome construction as Forster. He was equal to it though, again rattling off some of that faster-than-the-naked-eye-can-discern business, to produce one of those saves that is really worth a goal.
Numerous further tests await, of course, but for now I mark him down as competent with ball at feet, and jolly impressive in shot-stopping.
**3\. Ben Davies**
As mentioned, there was plenty to admire about our work going forward, and frankly AANP was drooling over some of the speed and smoothness with which we motored along from nondescript midfield spots to goalscoring positions. Not for the first time, some slightly more accurate finishing would have had us comfortably ahead by the closing stages, but I suppose one can’t have it all.
Kulusevski was, at times, once again pretty majestic. It seemed sufficient for the likes of Son and Johnson simply to turn up at the appointed hour and location, because Kulusevski was pretty comfortably carving apart Roma single-handedly, at various points in the first half.
I also thought Sarr again buzzed about the place like a man possessed, patrolling high up the pitch to win possession seemingly at will, while Bentancur was similarly effective about 20 yards further south. Annoyingly, many of these positive traits rather faded from existence in the second half, as our lot stopped giving too many cares about retaining possession, and then constantly found themselves outnumbered at the back.
However, during the entirety, Ben Davies seemed to accept whatever the Fates through at him, stiffen the upper lip and crack right on. There were times, of course, that Roma poked and pried in what were not Designated Ben Davies Zones, and consequently got round the back of our defence to cause a spot of alarm. Quite a few times, in fact, this happening relentlessly in the final 20 or 30.
But when matters did more directly involve B.D., he seemed well up to it. All reassuring stuff, given the absences of the first-choice pair. Moreover, with Destiny Udogie given the night off, Ben Davies also had to juggle the day-job with a spot of babysitting, of young Gray alongside him (who fared a lot better than on his previous forays at full-back).
Davies was on hand to peddle a lot of timely interventions and blocks, and while the general structure creaked a bit it seemed to be despite, rather than because of, his efforts. There was also a useful charge upfield with ball at feet, for those who like that sort of thing, only terminated by having him uprooted right outside the opposition area.
Most eye-catching to AANP, however, was his pass from deep in the first half, which bypassed the entire Roma midfield and set Kulusevski off on the gallop that led to him hitting the post. It would have been a charming addendum to his evening’s defensive work; instead, the whole thing looks vastly less impressive due to a late goal conceded and couple of points dropped, in this whole curious Europa format.
_Need a Christmas stocking-filler for the Spurs-supporter in your life? Keep your eyes peeled, for a new AANP book will soon be arriving on this site._