Opening Day Spurs v. City

What a great opening 25 minutes for Spurs. With five wonderful shots on net, and five great saves by Joe Hart, the spurs certainly looked like the team they ended with last season. Bale played like he was in peak form, as well as Assou-Ekotto. Both of them played on the left side, and Ekotto had a few great balls up the left side for Bale on the sprint to move the ball down the wing, which started a few good goal chances for Spurs. The majority of the team looked good as well. Ekotto and Bale were the best. It was also nice to see Dos Santos get playing time, after having a great World Cup and previously being loaned out for the past few years by Spurs. I think he will have a great future ahead of him, and it looks as if Mexico could have a power house of a team maybe in 2014, but certainly possible for 2018.

Anyway, the real question for the game was not how well Spurs would play, because they had little change during the off season, but how well Manchester City would do with all of their big spending. As many commentators and I’m sure reviewers said, they looked like a team with a lot of individual talent but no cohesion. Tevez played the best I thought and really had the only good chances during the game. Overall the Toure brothers played alright together but Yaya seemed to be trying to figure out City’s system. I also enjoyed watching Silva, but he never really had much space to run and dodge the Spurs defense. They did a good job of having at least two guys cutting off his direction, and so Silva, like Yaya, seemed to be a little lost at first. The only good sign for City, was their goal tending. If it wasn’t for Joe Hart, City would have been down at least 2 or 4 goals to nothing. He made some dazzling saves in the first 25 minutes to keep City in the game, when they looked like a beaten team.

Overall, the game satisfied my pallet for the opening of the Premier league. Although other games had more goals, Chelsea 6-0, Aston Villa 3-0, I thought this was the best Saturday match. It could be a crucial battle in the second game for possible 3rd or 4th spot. Anyway Man City still has plenty of time to get their new star players used to the system, but they had a relatively poor showing for their first game. They were lucky and I am sure happy that they made it out with a draw.