It didn’t seem to matter to the 3000 Spurs fans in the Stadion Evzena Rosickeho in Prague last night that they were playing the relative minnows of Slavia Prague rather than the European elite of Milan or Barcelona, for the travelling band of diehard Spurs fans it was enough to know that their club, with such a glorious European pedigree, was back playing competitively on European soil and for most of the game looking like they’d never been away.

Jermain Jenas’s goal in the first half may have been the only time the scoreboard operators were bothered but a win away from home, especially with a crucial away goal and clean sheet to add to it, is really all that Tottenham fans could have asked of their side and with encouraging signs from several of the newcomers that they may be settling in a little better it was a night to savour.

Tottenham’s 100th competitive European fixture wasn’t the kind of swashbuckling performance previous sets of Spurs fans may have come to enjoy and Prague, although threatening in the 2nd half, never really looked capable of causing any real havoc in the Spurs area with Michael Dawson immense alongside captain Ledley King and the new fullback pairing of Benoit Assou-Ekotto and Pascal Chimbonda looking strong in defence and eager to attack, two attributes that have usually been either/or for Spurs fullbacks of recent years.

Didier Zokora gave an athletic master class in the midfield and I can’t wait to see him fully unleashed on the Premiership. His class showed through in the World Cup and with a couple of games to get acclimatised to the speed of the Premiership I believe he can do for Spurs what a certain Mr. Vieira did for the Woolwich Gypsies for too many years. Tom Huddlestone did well for his European debut alongside Zokora and with a great range of passing and some tough tackling he certainly looks one for the future. I’m a little concerned about his pace for a central midfield role but that’s a small issue for another day, against Slavia Prague he stood up and was counted and should be well above players like Danny Murphy in the running for a first team place.

My only concern was the continued under performance of Jermain Defoe. We had such high hopes for this lad after his first season but he’s went backwards in terms of his ability so much that in hindsight I really think we should have cut our losses and sold him during the transfer window. To see Andy Johnson terrorising Premiership defences, including our own, for Everton and then looking at what we decided to stick with instead of buying AJ, I can’t help but feel we missed the boat. For Spurs sake and Defoe’s I think it’s maybe time to cut him loose and look elsewhere.

Something I would like to see is a Mido-Berbatov partnership. Berbatov has the cunning smarts and Mido the sheer force and I think they could prove to be a real handful for Premiership defences with midfielders like Jenas, Tainio, Zokora or Lennon breaking to support them. Keane and Defoe don’t seem to suit the Spurs system and we’ve nothing left to lose by trying the two bigger men out.

Overall, a good, solid return to European action for Spurs. The highlights of Jenas’s great strike, Zokora’s all action performance and some flashes from both fullbacks of the quality we’ve added in those positions this summer is very heartening, now we just need to get the Prague boys back to White Hart Lane and rattle a few more past them. I’m sure there are a few sore heads in Spurs shirts in Prague this morning, well done lads, you easily outsang the Czech fans, Spurs are back and the European Tour rolls on. Next stop: London N17.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 15th, 2006 at 9:02 am and is filed under Tottenham Hotspur. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.