Saints At Tottenham Hotspur The Verdict
This result will be seen of typical of this season, exhilarating attacking play all to no avail due to some awful defending, Saints came out of this game with pride and a sense of injustice but sadly nothing else.
Saints had the bad luck to have not one but two setbacks in the first half when firstly the ball struck Jack Stephens and wrong footed Angus Gunn to give Spurs a lead they did not deserve and then shortly after Shane Long had struck an equaliser . James Ward Prowse was the victim of a 50/50 challenge that cut his knee to the bone.
But Saints showed spirit to fight back and completely dominated the second half and when Danny Ings scored a cracking goal after a briliant run by Nathan Redmond had put him through, you thought that only one team would now win the game.
But Spurs rallied in the final 12 minutes to score two goals that really should have been defended better, the second a controversial penalty after Son Hueng Min clearly dived over the outstretched Angus Gunn and with the penalty dispatched there was little time for a Saints come back even if the fight was there.
There was plenty of good things to say about this game, from the great Saints support that drowned out Spurs who are fast showing they have opened a second branch of North London Libraries Ltd alongside one in the Highbury area, to the way Saints counter attacked on the break and caused a lot more trouble to the home goal then they on ours.
But yet again all the good work was undone by kamikaze defending and we can say all we want about certain players, but the fact is we have conceded soft goals all season, going forward we are a top 10 side, defending we are rock bottom.
People sometimes accuse me of being biased against certain players, perhaps I am and it is for good reason, they cannot defend.
There could be exciting times ahead for Saints, but only if we buy the right central defender, perhaps even two in the summer, if we do that then we can challenge for the top 10, if we don't then it will be deja vu, a case of what might have been if we had defended better.
Yes the penalty was an atrocious decision, at the game I'm not even sure it went to VAR, but the fact remained that Son was right through on the keeper and really shouldn't have been, as I have said all season some weeks we get away with it others we don't.
WE have to accept this season may either be spectacular in the rest of the Premier League season or it may turn out to be a damp squid with soft goals conceded all the way, but we can look forward to next season when we might just march forward again.
They have their critics, but Nathan Redmond, Pierre Emile Hojbjerg and James Ward Prowse have been magnificent in recent weeks and dragged us up the League table, they can be the backbone of this side, if we make the right additions in the summer then next year it may be different, it has to be !
What to read next:
U's Vs Accrington Match Preview As the round of matches over the festive period draws to a close, we have the visit of Accrington Stanley on that most rare of events in our football history, a Sunday afternoon kick-off. If you filter out play-off and cup games, in the league this accounts for just 25 games since we were formed, seven won, six drawn and 12 lost. As you would imagine, Sunday games are generally focussed around Christmas and the New Year, or more recently, Sky-mandated final games of the season. It’s been a pretty positive holiday schedule for the U’s too, eight points from four games, and with other results often going our way, we’re now just two places and three points outside the play-offs.
U's Vs MK Dons Match Preview Happy New Year U’s fans! After two hard fought 1-1 draws away from home across the festive period we kick off the New Year with a home match against Milton Keynes. Tickets look to be selling well, although not in the West Stand it seems, so should be a decent crowd providing MK bring more than their normal coach load. I know it doesn’t count for anything but the calendar year League Two table has us in fifth with 72 points from 46 matches played so 2025 hasn’t been a bad year to be a U’s fan.
Gillingham Vs U's Match Preview First and foremost, I hope you are all having a pleasant Christmas break relaxing with family and friends, and wishing you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. This will be our final match of 2025, with a trip to Priestfield to face old adversary Gillingham, our second game against them this month and our third this season. This will be our 112th game in all competitions against the Gills, a relationship that started with a Ted Davis U’s side winning 2-0 at Layer Road on 27th August 1938. At the final whistle tomorrow we will also be at the halfway point of the season, so considering at the end of September we were 20th, plenty of optimism for the second half of the season.
Crawley Vs U's Match Preview Merry Christmas U’s fans! Boxing Day in proper football leagues means football matches and the U’s face one of their shortest trips of the season as they venture across the Thames to face creepy Crawley. Crawley’s “stadium” is one of the few grounds I’ve gone away with the U’s (the 3-1 League Cup win back in 2019) and it felt like a ground that should be in the National League South but Crawley have been established in the football league since 2011 with two promotions to League One during that time which is impressive given the relative size of the club. We don’t have a huge history against Crawley Town, with just 24 meetings to date of which Crawley have won 11. In fact since that memorable League Cup win we hadn’t managed to beat Crawley until the, not as memorable but probably more important, 3-2 away win towards the end of the 2023/24 season that went a long way to helping us stay in this division.
U's Vs Newport Match Preview And so, Danny and Nicky enter their second century of games managing the U’s, at home to struggling Newport – let’s hope it starts a bit better than the first century finished. There won’t be many games we score three and lose, trouble is there’ll be even fewer where we concede four and win. That being said, I couldn’t fault the first hour of the Salford game, with the U’s in control of a game against good opposition, and on a typically heavy pitch. Then we kind of fell apart, certainly defensively, helped in no small part by a masterclass from ex-U’s Luke Garbutt (how is he only in League 2?). Credit must also go to 250+ of the faithful, a long trip starting at stupid o’clock – they deserved more than that for their support.