A draw can sometimes be an exciting thing, like when you achieve a result against an opponent that you know you had no business competing with. Saturday\u2019s 2-2 draw against Manchester United didn\u2019t feel like one of those. The last gasp Matthijs de Ligt header was a gut punch, but considering neither team was exactly setting the house on fire neither did it feel like had dropped points ourselves. In fact, a 2-2 draw in which neither team had an xG greater than 1.0 felt both weird and actually pretty accurate.<\/p>\n
The player ratings seem to bear that out too. There were a couple of definitely good performances, and a few moderately poor ones, but nobody was incredible and nobody was abject. Just a lot of meh, more or less. And whatever else you might think about this match, it certainly feels ok going into another international break without thinking about a loss.<\/p>\n
Anyway, today\u2019s theme is one I\u2019ve been holding onto for a while. Hang around any football forum and you\u2019re going to see commentators butchering the spelling of footballers\u2019 names. Some of them are honest mistakes because the player has a unique name, and some of them are\u2026 look, I dunno but the number of times I\u2019ve see Mohammed Kudus\u2019 name misspelled on this blog\u2019s comments is kind of funny.<\/p>\n
So as we head into another two weeks with no real football of which to speak, let\u2019s instead rate the Tottenham Hotspur players to the themes of various misspellings of Spurs players\u2019 names. And yes, I\u2019ve seen ALL of these and have been collecting them.<\/p>\n
5 stars: Mohammed Kudas\/Kudos\/Kuduss\/Cudos<\/p>\n
No Tottenham players in this category.<\/p>\n
4 stars: Joao Paulinha\/Palinha\/Pullinya<\/p>\n
Wilson Odobert (Community \u2014 4.0): <\/strong><\/strong>His substitution (along with Destiny Udogie\u2019s) changed the game. He\u2019s clearly figuring out this league and this level, and his performances are starting to show that rising confidence. Heavily involved in both Spurs goals, and grabbed the assist for Richy\u2019s flick (I\u2019m convinced Wilson\u2019s shot was going to hit the post).<\/p>\n Mathys Tel (Community \u2014 4.0): <\/strong><\/strong>Absolutely delighted with his contribution, and the turn\/finish for his goal was very well taken. He\u2019s young and he won\u2019t always be this good, but it\u2019s quite nice to see that he has this in him.<\/p>\n 3.5 stars: Dejan Kulusevsky\/Kuluskevski\/Kulasevski<\/p>\n I know we did this already, but it remains baffling that a guy can be at a club for four seasons and people still can\u2019t get his name right<\/p>\n Micky van de Ven (Community \u2014 3.5): <\/strong><\/strong>Clearly full of confidence after Copenhagen. Had a couple of fantastic defensive stops (the best being vs. Sesko) and looked solid throughout.<\/p>\n Xavi Simons (Community \u2014 3.5): <\/strong><\/strong>Slippery (in a good way, but also in a bad way as he had difficulty with the slick pitch) in the attacking third but still looks perplexed that his teammates aren\u2019t making the runs he\u2019s used to when he gets the ball around the box.<\/p>\n Destiny Udogie (Community \u2014 ): <\/strong><\/strong>Developing quite a good partnership with Wilson on the left side overlap. Got the assist for Tel\u2019s outstanding goal.<\/p>\n Guglielmo Vicario (Community \u2014 3.0): <\/strong><\/strong>Rooted for United\u2019s first goal. Probably could\u2019ve done better to stop the late equalizer, but it\u2019s hard to get too upset with him for not preventing a close-range header off a set piece when he\u2019s done so brilliantly for us in recent matches.<\/p>\n Cuti Romero (Community \u2014 3.5): <\/strong><\/strong>Picked up a stupid and rash yellow card but otherwise was solid enough? Hope Frank\u2019s not lying about his substitution being for fatigue.<\/p>\n Djed Spence (Community \u2014 3.0): <\/strong><\/strong>I dunno, this was the Platonic ideal of a \u201che was fine\u201d match. But I\u2019d still like to see a left footed player as LWB as Spence has some defensive frailties at times there.<\/p>\n Joao Palhinha (Community \u2014 3.0): <\/strong><\/strong>Another match where Palhinha did Good Palhinha Things, but what we needed wasn\u2019t really Good Palhinha Things, it was someone to pass the ball vertically up the pitch, which he doesn\u2019t do. Still, he wasn\u2019t poor and had a shot saved.<\/p>\n Thomas Frank (Community \u2014 3.0): <\/strong><\/strong>I officially no longer know what to do about Frank. He\u2019s somewhat hamstrung by injuries but also isn\u2019t really showing that he has any other ideas apart from what he\u2019s shown in recent matches. This is a throw-up-your-hands-whatever three star rating, since we didn\u2019t lose.<\/p>\n Pedro Porro (Community \u2014 2.5): <\/strong><\/strong>Not one of his better performances. Wayward with his crossing, and let Mbeumo past him more often than I\u2019d like. Didn\u2019t mind him being subbed off since he needs his minutes managed, but it\u2019s a bit telling, yeah?<\/p>\n Pape Matar Sarr (Community \u2014 3.0): <\/strong><\/strong>As much as I dislike the Palhintancur double pivot, I think I might have disliked this more. A lot of running around, no real production, and a big mistake leading up to United\u2019s first goal.<\/p>\n Brennan Johnson (Community \u2014 2.5): <\/strong><\/strong>Put a cross on a plate for Richarlison (who whiffed) and had a goal correctly called for offside. Otherwise, pretty unremarkable performance from him in a game where we needed some of that hot back post action. (Yes, phrasing, and I\u2019m leaving it.)<\/p>\n Richarlison (Community \u2014 2.5): <\/strong><\/strong>Notable that I\u2019m putting him at 2.5 stars after he redirected in a late goal off his shoulder that nearly won the match. But that tells you how off the pace he was otherwise. Whiffed again on a beautiful cross from BJ and was otherwise feasting on scraps. BUT \u2014 he was hustling in the press, so there\u2019s that.<\/p>\n Randal Kolo Muani (Community \u2014 2.5): <\/strong><\/strong>Gets something of a pass from me now that we know he was injured by an errant Slabhead elbow at around 12\u2019 and still played through it. But he wasn\u2019t very good.<\/p>\n Rodrigo Bentancur (Community \u2014 3.0): <\/strong><\/strong>If I\u2019m putting Sarr here then I should also put Lolo here because he provided about the same level of contribution in midfield.<\/p>\n Remarkably, no players were this poor vs. United, and that\u2019s kind of nice?<\/p>\n No Tottenham players were as bad as misspelling Archie Gray\u2019s name. At least this time.<\/p>\n Tom Carroll Memorial Non-Rating<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A draw can sometimes be an exciting thing, like when you achieve a result against an opponent that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[179309,13,12,14,179310,179311],"class_list":{"0":"post-562905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-community-player-ratings","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-tottenham-hotspur-analysis","13":"tag-tottenham-hotspur-player-ratings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115529409133825484","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}