Despite Antonio Conte’s summer time departure being broadly approved as an inevitability, Tottenham can nonetheless rescue this season. Even if completing fourth final yr has no longer ended in a lot happiness this marketing campaign, the monetary rewards for membership, enjoying and training workforce are substantial.
Newcastle’s win at Nottingham Forest had additional upped the ante however at Southampton, as so regularly with the Tottenham of 2022-23, questions of motivation must be raised. Pape Sarr thoughtlessly and sadly giving for free a penalty within the demise seconds, swinging a leg right into a flying Ainsley Maitland-Niles was once a part of a work, a person error redolent of a collective sag.
Just when objectives from Harry Kane and Ivan Perisic had them in complete keep watch over, Tottenham failed to deal with the incentive degree of fighters enjoying for his or her lives. “We didn’t have control of the game,” mentioned Eric Dier. “We only have ourselves to blame.”
Not that Conte noticed a lot collective spirit, in a post-match washing of his fingers as he angrily laid into his avid gamers. “The problem is that we are not a team,” he mentioned. “We are 11 players that go on to the pitch. I see selfish players who don’t want to help each other.
For that stoppage-time spot-kick, James Ward-Prowse stepped up to thrash home and suddenly Southampton were level; deservedly so for efforts that were often chaotic. They refused to surrender.
Rubén Sellés’s tenure as interim manager has resulted in wins over Chelsea and Leicester and now this escape act. Carlos Alcaraz and Ward-Prowse are no longer the only Southampton players to have scored a Premier League goal for the club since the World Cup. Ché Adams and then Theo Walcott buried that statistical ghost and the Saints’ chances of staying up remain alive.
“You have to have belief,” said Ward-Prowse, who took his penalty against his former nextdoor neighbor, Fraser Forster. “We’re in the mix and we have to be positive and look up the table.”
Selles remains to be tireless in his seek for solutions. To apply a flat, midweek house defeat by means of Brentford that stored the membership backside, a hallmark of rising desperation was once that none of Southampton’s 5 January signings were decided on to begin. His risk-taking ultimately paid off.
“I don’t think we deserved to be 3-1 down but we showed character and the crowd helped us,” mentioned Sellés. “Once we scored the second goal we had all the energy. The players want to fight for each other and I’m very proud of it.”
During a first half best remembered for four substitutions, the first in the opening seconds as a tearful Richarlison departed, Spurs fans looked for alternative entertainment. They compared old Arsenal foe Walcott unfavorably to former hero Aaron Lennon and also called for Daniel Levy, present at St Mary’s, to step down. Clearly, fans’ minds were elsewhere, too. Walcott in turn played as if extra motivated.
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Seven minutes were added on after so many stoppages, giving Tottenham time to score, Pedro Porro striking with his right foot after Son Heung-min’s incisive pass. The January signing looks ideal for a Conte team, although whether the next manager plays wing-back football is another uncertainty to add to the growing Tottenham pile.
The Tottenham torpor of the first half made a swift reappearance after the break to prelude the anarchy that would follow. In the second half’s opening seconds, Walcott found space vacated by Clément Lenglet, laying up Adams to score.
With 25 minutes left, Kane’s first goal outside London since 8 October re-established Spurs’ lead, if not their command, as Dejan Kulusevski’s feint and cross teed up the captain to score. As with Kane’s header, Perisic’s goal came just as Southampton began to push forwards. Gavin Bazunu, the Premier League’s youngest first-choice goalkeeper but also the keeper with the worst save percentage in the division, could probably have done better.
Three points booked in? Sékou Mara, part of a triple substitution, Sellé’s final Hail Mary, began to cause problems, nodding down for Walcott to score. Rather than swatting aside an opponent bottom of the league, Spurs found themselves clinging on. Sarr’s misfortune and Southampton’s redemption would become as inevitable as Conte’s departure. Summer is a long way off for a manager so dissatisfied. “This is unacceptable, this is the first time in my career I see this,” he mentioned. “I do not wish to see what I’ve observed lately.”
