Spurs have another reason to love Wales

One nil to the Tottenham does not sound er very Tottenham does it? The best defence in the league so far, one goal conceded in eight competitive games. Tottenham managers are not supposed to do defensive discipline. Even George Graham left his famous defensive discipline at the other end of Seven Sisters Road and had the decency to serve up a few goal fests just to satisfy Tottenham’s thrill seeking faithful! No, AVB is not your typical Tottenham manager. The man with the Project Plan seems to be striking a fine balance between making Spurs hard to beat and playing attractive football. The winning goal, a delightful cross from the outside of Lamela’s foot followed by a sumptuously flicked back heeled finish from Paulinho summed up this side perfectly. A goal made in South America, scored by an English team, built by a very European coach.

It may sound clichéd, but this was not your typical defensive, one nil smash and grab raid. Spurs dominated possession, carved out many chances and but for goal keeper David Marshall, Cardiff were on for a heck of a hiding. This, the same Cardiff who gave Manchester city a bloody nose three weeks ago and just the type of game Spurs of old could be trusted to make a mess of. The same is true of the other one nil wins this season and when they lost, Arsenal looked more like the away team, finishing the match with seven defenders on the pitch as they clung on desperately. Spurs have been creating chances and have had more shots at goal than any other team in the premiership. Someone is going to get a real trashing at some point in the season. I would love it if the unfortunate team were Chelsea next week. Just Luv it!

Spurs have now made their best start to a season in five years and although nothing is won in September, it is a decent platform. In the first six games of last season, they did not keep a clean sheet, dropped five points in the first three games and conceded damaging goals in the last 15 minutes of those games. Their opponents were Newcastle, WBA, Norwich, Reading, QPR and Manchester United. They missed out on a 4^th place by a point, 3^rd place by three points and 2^nd by six points.  At least six to eight points were dropped against West Brom, Norwich, Fulham, Stoke and Wigan. Spurs seemed determined not to make the same mistake this time even without Senor Bale.

One of most impressive, yet overlooked aspects of last season was how often Spurs finished games as the stronger side, winning games in the last minutes and salvaging draws from losses. This was no accident after the indifferent start to last season. I remembered an interview around December in which William Gallas talked about how AVB tweaked the team’s training to focus on the last 15 minutes of games in order to cut out the late goals. The headlines were understandably hugged by the ‘most expensive one’ and when he did not score, the team mostly struggled. Spurs have continued the strong finishing pattern this term and it bodes well for the rest of the season, especially given that this is a team still getting to know each other and developing a playing style.

It is noticeable that Hugo Lloris has had a few excitable moments recently. He was quite marginal against Tromso in midweek and again against Cardiff in dashing to make clearances. AVB's preferred style of pressing up the field means that Lloris plays almost as a sweeper. He is undeniably a great goalkeeper and seems to relish the sweeper role. However, he needs to be careful not to push his luck too much or he could find himself taking an early bath.

A word on Vladimir Chirices. Romanians will be able to live freely in the UK from January 2014 under the terms of the European Union treaty. So why on earth did it take the home office almost three weeks to grant a work permit to a Romanian international when non European players have had it issued in a day? The Tromso match would have been ideal to make his debut and build crucial match sharpness ahead of tougher tests. Maybe we should send Franco Baldini to sort out future work permit hearings. He gets things done.