Tottenham’s top four aspirations were lifted Thursday following a 2-1 win over Brighton at Spurs’ Stadium. Brighton took a first half lead through Adam Webster, but Tottenham roared back with second half strikes from Harry Kane and Dele Alli.
Alli’s classy winner in the 72nd minute was a continuation of the Englishman’s fine form under manager José Mourinho: since the Portuguese’s appointment, Alli has scored five goals and provided three assists in eight games.
And although Alli’s finish was exceptional and the assist goes to Serge Aurier, the goal’s main engineer was the wantaway Christian Eriksen. It’s been heavily rumored that Eriksen will leave the club in January, but he entered the match today in the 68th minute as a replacement for the industrious Harry Winks and immediately provided some much-needed quality on the ball.
The sequence began with Eriksen hammering a ball out wide to Lucas Moura. Moura slipped a pass inside to Harry Kane in the area, but the striker immediately played it back to Eriksen about 25 yards from goal. The Danish midfielder sprayed a perfect pass in the other direction and onto the foot of Aurier.
Aurier laid it off to Alli, and the 23-year-old attacker cushioned a side-footed half-volley back inside the far post. It really was a glorious goal from a Tottenham perspective.
Dele Alli Goal Vs. Brighton
WHAT A GOAL pic.twitter.com/VOkZisHpM3
— NBC Sports Soccer (@NBCSportsSoccer) December 26, 2019
Dele Alli Goal Vs. Brighton (Full Sequence)
Spurs have now conceded 15 goals in Mourinho’s first nine matches, which is certainly not the sort of defensive record you'd associate with the man, but he’s promised to retain Tottenham’s attacking mentality.
“I know how to do it,” said Mourinho with regards to adopting a defensive approach. “But to do it 100% I am going to take away from the team some qualities that we want to keep. And then it is more difficult to do it because to play for a clean sheet and to put all the focus on the clean sheet, on the improvement of the defensive organization and try to kill the mistakes that we make, that is not difficult to do.
“The difficulty is to do it with players that are the players they are, with the habits they have; the difficult thing is to put it right defensively without losing the qualities we can have offensively.”
If Eriksen does in fact leave next month, a lot of those offensive qualities certainly go out the door with him. At least there’ll always be Harry Kane, who scored his 10th goal of the Premier League season today.
Tottenham returns to action on Saturday against Norwich City at Carrow Road.
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