Bournemouth 0-2 Spurs | Maddison on ‘convincing performance’
Sat 26 August 2023, 18:55|
Tottenham Hotspur
James Maddison was pleased with all aspects of the performance in our 2-0 win at Bournemouth in the Premier League on Saturday.
Scorer of the opening goal - his first in Spurs shirt - vice-skipper ‘Madders’ echoed Ange Postecoglou’s analysis of how we played through Bournemouth’s aggressive high press, then how we recovered from the home side’s best spell at the start of the second half to score a second and see the game out.
Madders provided the finishing touch to Pape Sarr’s fine pass to open the scoring on 16 minutes and after that spell from the home side, Deki Kulusevski provided a cute finish to Destiny Udogie’s great work down the left for 2-0 on 63 minutes. The arrival of Ivan Perisic, Oliver Skipp, Gio Lo Celso and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg off the bench saw us dominate possession in the final quarter of the game to go home deserved winners - it ended 17-11 in terms of efforts at goal, 57-43% possession.
“I thought it was a really convincing performance,” said James, speaking to us on the Review Show on SPURSPLAY. “We implemented a lot of what the gaffer wants to see in his team.
“In the first half, we broke through the press pretty well, through good play, and created chances from transitions from being pressed… a couple of passes, staying calm, full-backs inside, working the ball and all of a sudden, we’re into the back four. I thought we did that really well.
“Bournemouth came out hot at the start of the second half and we had to weather a bit of a storm. That’s fine, you’ll get that in the Premier League when you come away from home. We can’t be naïve enough to think that teams are not going to build up momentum and pressure, that’s being the away team in the Premier League, but we weathered it well, blocked shots, headed crosses away, then we scored the all-important second goal and that gave us a cushion in the game.”
