Spurs 3 Southend 1

Okay, so it was only Southend today in the fourth round of the FA Cup, but hey, it's the team that was on the schedule. Aaron Lennon was a joy to watch today, running up and down both sides of the pitch and creating chances for his teammates to score. Spurs took a 1-0 lead just 12 minutes in on a strike from Robbie Keane, and went further on the attack for most of the rest of the half, as the Southend defensive line looked harried all day long.


Lennon step up both Spurs goals in the second half, the first in the 49th minute by Jermaine Jenas, giving Spurs a 2-0 lead. Even though the final possession chart shows the visitors with a 53% possession lead, they had little to show for all of that, and they were the benefactors of a handball by Hossam Ghaly in the battle in front of the goal after Southend's only corner kick to set up a penalty kick from Freddy Eastwood in the 69th minute.


Spurs then went on the attack as the penalty kick gave the visitors a sign of life, with Spurs all it sometimes takes is one momentary lapse of concentration, and it looked like Robbie Keane was denied an obvious penalty kick one minute later after being taken down in the box, ruining an obvious scoring chance. The referee did not agree, and Keane vented for the next couple of minutes, and drew a yellow card for his efforts one minute later. At this point, I thought Spurs were quite in danger of those aforementioned lapses of direction, but thankfully Lennon was on top of his game, and tore down the right side to find a sliding Mido in front of the goal for the final tally.


Actually, my favourite play of the game was one in which Spurs didn't score, it was set up by Lennon, again, with a terrific display of running and dribbling down the left flank some 60 yards, finding Didier Zokora just outside the box. Robbie Keane, recognizing the space in the Southend defensive live, took a step back to receive Zokora's pass, but missed the wide open shot in the 61st minute.


First Spurs match I've seen in person where Paul Robinson wasn't the goalie, in this one reserve Radek Cerny did a fine job with the couple of saves when he was involved with the action, though he was fooled badly on the penalty kick.


One final note: the momentary lapse of concentration was evident again in stoppage time, at the close of the 92nd minute, when Michael Dawson, inside the goal area, kicked a ball back to Cerny with a Southend player in extremely close vicinity. That Southend player created that chance by himself out of nothing, it was three Spurs in the back against him, he saw the ball go toward Cerny and decided to see what would happen if he pressed Spurs a bit. Well, he nearly got a goal for his effort if Cerny hadn't hurried up to kick the ball away.

Some final stats to further testify for the overall Spurs domination:



Tottenham Southend
Shots (on Goal)28(16) 9(4)
Fouls 10 14
Corner Kicks 15 1
Offsides 1 0
Possession 47% 53%
Yellow Cards 2 1
Red Cards 0 0
Saves 5 8




MATCH