Tottenham Hotspur vs Espanyol Match Review !

This was Spurs' last pre season game before the start of the season and to be fair more positives came out of the result that negatives despite a rather poor result. It was a very exciting day at the lane where Soldado, Paulinho and Chadli all appeared in front of the Tottenham fans in North London but that wasn't the only excitement because fan favourites Younes Kaboul and Sandro made their long awaited come back from injury.

We started extremely well and in the first five minutes we should have been one up. A Gylfi Sigurdsson free kick found Paulinho's head who headed the ball into the corner but was denied a dream start to his Spurs career as the offside flag went up when it arguably shouldn't have. Spurs kept up the pressure with Soldado looking extremely dangerous. After 29 minutes of excellent football we were finally rewarded a penalty when Danny Rose was taken down in the box by Javi Lopez. Soldado stepped up and put the ball right into the corner, he couldn't have asked for a better first thirty minutes for his new club. But the tempo slowed down after the goal and Espanyol who were kept in their own half in the first thirty minutes were allowed to push forward. The lack of defensive players was visible and they looked quite dangerous going forward. Just before half time Espanyol managed to get the equaliser from a corner where David Lopez was able to head the ball into the near post. The second half saw the return of Kaboul and Sandro but despite a near winner from Andros Townsend the substitution of the two was the biggest excitement of the second half.

Overall I was very impressed by the performance of the team especially in the first half. Chadli really impressed me with his great skill and in my opinion he was the man of the match. Paulinho was denied a dream start to his Spurs career but nevertheless he still performed excellently and definitely looks to be a great signing but out of the three new signing the one that excited me the most was Soldado. He looked extremely dangerous and has already scored at the Lane. He is what I think we were missing last year and now that we have him I think if we keep Bale we can challenge for the title, the football played yesterday was great and it proved a real difficulty for Espanyol to defend against and in my opinion I can see us challenging at the top with that style of football. But yesterday also proved some things we need to work on. The defending from corners was atrocious and we were lucky to only concede once from a corner and the final thing that needs to be worked on is the defence. Yesterday I was not comfortable watching Fryers and Dawson at the back and I think that another defender is desperately needed before the end of the transfer window. Next stop Crystal Palace.