Currently we have the following players out on loan:

David Button – Plymouth Argyle (season)
Oscar Jansson – Northampton Town (5th September)
John Bostock – Hull City (season)
Dean Parrett – Plymouth Argyle (season, with a recall clause after 28 days due to it being a youth loan)
Andros Townsend – Ipswich Town (season)
Ryan Mason – Doncaster Rovers (season, with a recall clause after 28 days due to it being a youth loan)
Jon Obika – Crystal Palace (season, with a recall clause after 28 days due to it being a youth loan)

We’ve got our players out to some good clubs this year, and it’s worth noting that all are in a division above where they were last year, so credit to Tim Sherwood and the rest of the team.

Fuller’s goal.

Fancy Stoke scoring from a set piece?!

Etherington whips in a corner. There’s some commotion in the box, as Gomes feels that he is impeded in his attempts to get the ball.

In truth, Huth stands his ground, although we’ve all seen them given as fouls.

The ball finds Faye at the back post, who is marked by Kaboul. It’s tricky to tell who it comes off, but it either comes off Kaboul’s lower leg, or Faye’s toe. You would expect better from Kaboul, but he may not have had the best view, with the ball dropping steeply over Corluka’s head.

Fuller beats Huddlestone to the ball, and prods home, with Gomes nowhere.

In fairness to Chris Foy, he had an excellent view of the incident.

A disappointing one to concede, but Stoke are so well practiced at these.

Thanks to Man Utd having a dedicated TV channel (something I hope Spurs are at least thinking about), their U18 matches are recorded, which gives fans a great opportunity to see Academy and Reserve matches that they otherwise wouldn’t.

Our U18s played a friendly against them last Saturday morning (with Rio Ferdinand, Edwin van der Sar and Anderson in attendance), and the clips are now on youtube. For those who don’t have the time or inclination to watch the whole thing, I’ll highlight the key moments.

1st half.

The Spurs formation was announced as:

From the clips, it looked more like:

Of course, Spurs often use a very fluid formation at this level, so I’d imagine that players chopped and changed during the match.

The move for Kane’s goal starts at 5:52 – lovely football from Hawkins, played into Oyenuga, and Hawkins feeds the return first time into Kane’s path – good finish across the keeper.
Second goal at 8:20 – glorious pass from Hawkins to Kane, great first touch and cross from the left, and Oyenuga made a good run and tapped home.
Fantastic save from Jordan Archer on about 9:40.
United goal around 10:15, top finish from Cofie after a give and go.
Nice effort from Kane on 11:30.

2nd half.

Third Spurs goal around 4:40 – clever Dombaxe free-kick into Kane, who is tripped in the box. Oyenuga scores the penalty (risky one straight down the middle!).
Great effort from Jesse Waller-Lassen at 6:05.
Durojaiye angered by a bad challenge at 7:00, Kane and Oyenuga do well to drag him away. I noticed that Durojaiye and Lingard kissed and made up at the end of the match.

It looked like a strong performance from Spurs – the commentator claimed that it was a slightly older Spurs side, but that wasn’t the case – we had plenty of youngsters involved.

Janoir looked OK at centre back – certainly better than Blackwood – so I wonder whether he will be signed up.

Official Site report: U18s beat United

Having looked so strong, and so assured against Manchester City on Saturday, Spurs turned in a nightmare of a defensive performance against Young Boys last night, primarily due to being overrun in the middle of midfield (which is where all the goals came from).

Young Boys had an extra man (owing to their 4-2-3-1 formation), but then so did Manchester City on Saturday. There were two main reasons for Spurs’ failure this time round: 1. an inability to keep the ball, 2. an inability to keep an organised defensive shape.

Lulic’s goal.

Lulic’s opener was quite a lucky goal in many ways, but it had been coming, even at only 4 minutes in.

Doubai picked up a loose ball, and drove at Giovani.

Not only did Giovani not do much to stop Doubai, he had nobody to pass him on to as Palacios was slow to come out to him.

Doubai shoots from distance – there is clearly a player in an offside position. The ball strikes the offside player, and the flag should go up. It doesn’t, and the ball ricochets to Lulic.

Lulic makes no mistake with his finish, which is crisp and into the bottom corner.

Bienvenu’s goal.

12 minutes on the clock, and it goes from bad to worse.

Pavlyuchenko surrenders possession cheaply. Doubai intercepts and runs from deep in his own half.

Doubai continues to carry the ball forward, and our players seem unsure of what to do.

Instead of attempting to restrict his options, whilst jockeying, Palacios makes the decision to go to ground. He may make a bit of contact with the ball, but if anything it steers it further into the path of Bienvenu. Note the positioning of the Spurs defence – Dawson is the deepest, but still at least 5 yards higher up the pitch than I would expect against a quick counter-attacking side.

Dawson is caught horrendously flat-footed. He should have dropped off further but, instead, he is totally outstripped by Bienvenu, who has a clear run on goal.

He calmly steers the ball passed Gomes.

Hochstrasser’s goal.

Costanzo picks up the ball in a ridiculous amount of space – not a Spurs player pushing up to restrict him, and Defoe’s token effort to close is virtually pointless.

He carries the ball forward and sees an opportunity to thread a through-ball to Hochstrasser, who is alive to the situation.

It’s a very well-weighted pass, but Bassong really shouldn’t be letting his man in beyond him. His positioning has meant that he hasn’t got a chance, but he isn’t helped by his lack of reading of the pass – he initially moves towards it.

Hochstrasser powers the finish, but I’m sure Gomes will be disappointed to be beaten at his near post.

A nightmare first half for Spurs with the midfield totally overrun, and the defence flat-footed and sloppy positionally. Assou–Ekotto struggled (especially as he was given a questionable yellow very early on) as Young Boys looked to get two against one on their right, and Corluka had no support from Giovani on our right.

Redknapp should have opted for a 4-5-1/4-2-3-1 for this match, or at least asked one of the strikers to play a more withdrawn role (as Defoe occasionally did at the end of last season). Still, we managed to get out of the first leg with a good chance of still qualifying for the Champions League proper, and hopefully the match will act as a wake-up call to the manager and players.