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MOTD: Liverpool 1-1 Tottenham Hotspur
Tottenham Hotspur missed a vital opportunity to put pressure on Premier League leaders Leicester City with a 1-1 draw against Liverpool. Mauricio Pochettino’s men came back from behind to snatch a point at Anfield courtesy of a lovely finish from Harry Kane, whose twenty-two goals this season are a new Spurs record in the Premier League.
Yet Spurs lacked the legs to push forward for a turnaround, and although they showed spirit to simply make it over the line given Liverpool’s high pressing throughout the ninety minutes, Leicester now have the chance to go seven points clear at the top of the table against Southampton tomorrow.
“I am happy with the way we fought back, with the character we showed,” said Mauricio Pochettino, via Spurs’ official website. “I am disappointed to drop two points but playing Liverpool at Anfield is never easy. We still have to keep trying to reduce the gap and we must continue to believe, because in football a lot can happen in a short time.”
For the home side, the game hardly mattered in terms of the table — they’re still in ninth place, nine points adrift of the top four — but they admirably stepped up to the big occasion nevertheless.
“I told the boys at half-time that it looked a little bit like a ‘stop and go’ game, where our machine is always on go,” said Jurgen Klopp, per Liverpool’s official website. “It was really good and then we had a stop. I don’t know why, we have to watch it.”
“Then it was an open game, a little bit more wild, two pressing teams but the pressing was not too good anymore. We didn’t defend as well as in the first half especially.”
Both teams began the match at full-throttle and Simon Mignolet saved from Christian Eriksen’s strike early on. Hugo Lloris tipped Adam Lallana’s low effort just wide in the thirty-eighth minute and batted Lallana’s mis-hit volley away just two minutes later.
Kane had an opportunity to put Tottenham front on the brink of the half, but dragged a low effort wide.
On the other side of the half, Coutinho found the breakthrough with a cool, side-footed finish at the end of a lovely move.
Kane, however, leveled the game within ten minutes with a superb strike on the turn in the sixty-third minute.
Pochettino lauded Kane for his goalscoring achievement. “Harry Kane, for me, is one of the best strikers in the world. Today, again, he showed I am not wrong,” said the Argentina manager.
“It was a tough game,” said Kane. “It would have been nice to go on and win it, but we did all we could. We can’t do anything else now except watch Leicester.”
Klopp said of his team: “I saw a lot of good things today, really good signs for our future and things like this but on the other side we showed again a little bit of our problems.
“But it’s much more difficult to show what we showed in our good moments than to finish our problems. So we will finish them, we will find solutions for them 100 per cent.
“But it’s a hard way. Along the way you get a few knocks and today we got a knock. We have to accept it and carry on.”
The same analysis can be extended to Spurs.
Photo credit: md.faisalzaman, via Flickr