It's Oh So Quiet!

Spurs 3 - Charlton Athletic 0.

It can't be very often a set of supporters find themselves on the receiving end of a 3-0 defeat, yet leave elated and applaud their team off the pitch.

Today was one of those rare days.

Over a pre match drink at one of the fine St. Pancras hostelries, the consensus was it would be a 'good' result if we could keep the Champions League contenders down to 4 goals.
I even dreamed of keeping the score at 0-0 for up to half an hour!

With the bar set at these levels, today was a rip roaring success.

White Hart Lane was full, yet extremely quiet in the home sections.
Crispy commented that the generous pricing of just £20 admission, probably meant that many people who don't normally get to see Spurs turned up today.

I'd also guess that Charlton Athletic are hardly the kind of opposition to make a Spurs fan's mouth water, especially when they've been treated to the best Europe has to offer within the last few months.

I remember when we were in the Premier League and some plucky 3rd tier team would rock up at The Valley in a cup competition, finding it quite difficult to raise myself to that 'Matchday Feeling'.

Charitably, I'll say this was the case with the Spurs fans today as they were almost mute for most of the game.

Before the match, our supporters were in fine voice.
It was fun, loud and quite impressive to be taking over such a large stadium. Not quite the same as taking over Brentford was it?

We really got behind our players and despite the obvious gulf in class, Charlton managed to keep up with Spurs in the key areas.

Francis, (who must have been mightily relieved that Gareth Bale was injured), had a good half and all over the pitch there were other battles where our League 1 players were giving a good account of themselves.

Halftime came and amazingly, the score had remained 0-0.

'Arry paid us the ultimate compliment by bringing on Modric for the second half.

Spurs now looked much sharper and their crisp passing, allied with their superior touch and ball control soon paid dividends.

The Spurs fans to our left, barely raised a cheer until their second goal was scored and then they tried to give it the 'biggy', becoming all triumphant, waving at us as if we'd care!

Ultimately, they were pumping their chests because they'd scored against a team 5th in League 1, while they are pushing to become one of the top teams in the Premier League.

We had never expected to beat Spurs, purely keeping them out for so long was a success.

After the initial flurry of excitement, the Spurs support reverted to their earlier apathy, even after a third goal was scored.

At that point, Spurs took their foot off the gas, knowing they had probably done enough.

We had a few chances, even pushing forward enough to win some corners*

*I was particularly pleased with this spot the ball style photograph, (you may need to click on the picture to see it but I promise the ball is there!)

The game ended with a rousing chorus of Valley Floyd Road and the oft sung ode to South London.

Well done to Keefy Peacock and his, (however briefly), troops on a fine performance which was definitely enough to make us proud. 

A Casual Rating

No Primark novelty slogan tee shirts today! 

Every one of our team can have the coveted Lacoste polo shirt in recognition of their efforts.

Other than during a 15 minute period when Spurs turned on the class, our boys managed to stifle their more illustrious opponents and also showed they could actually 'play'.

What more could we ask for?

The Charlton support was fantastic today, even (especially) after Spurs started to run away with it.

We can all be very proud of ourselves too.

Ref Watch

Referee Oliver was much better than the usual crud we've become used to in League 1.

 He did give some very 'homerish' decisions early on, in fact it seemed as if there were 20 minutes played before we won a decision of any kind. 

There were some free kicks given for tackles that most certainly wouldn't have been given in League 1.

However, in summary I thought the referee was fair and most importantly, consistent.

Where do we go from here?

Who knows. 

The new owners will give us an indication of their aspirations for the club and the depth of their pockets when we see who the next man in the hot seat is.

What is certainly clear, is that we are now free to 'concentrate on the league!'