Tottenham Hotspur vs Crystal Palace. Premier League.
Tottenham Hotspur StadiumAttendance59,812.
Report and highlights as Heung-Min Son stars and Tottenham run riot to bounce back to form
Saturday 14 September 2019 21:05, UK
Tottenham's season got up and running courtesy of a four-goal first-half blitz against Crystal Palace to run out 4-0 winners.
After taking just five points from their opening four games, Mauricio Pochettino's men burst into life with a thumping first-half display where goals from Heung-Min Son (10 & 23), Erik Lamela (42) and a Patrick van Aanholt own goal (21) floored Roy Hodgson's side.
Crystal Palace may have a fine record overall against the 'big six' but Spurs have now won the last nine Premier League meetings between the teams with no Palace player scoring in the last eight.
Since the start of February, Palace had taken 50 per cent more Premier League points than Tottenham so should've arrived with plenty of faith and confidence in their approach. Instead, they looked very vulnerable from the first whistle and Son opened the scoring on eight minutes.
Harry Winks and Harry Kane had already fired strikes at goal when a routine ball over the top got the South Korean in behind and he stayed cool to cut inside before firing into the corner.
With Mamadou Sakho back from six months out injured it was assumed Palace would be further boosted at the back but they looked so disorganised.
This was on show when Serge Aurier's cross was deflected past his own goalkeeper by Van Aanholt on 21 minutes. On his first start of the season, Aurier provided a quality outlet on the right-flank throughout.
Two minutes later it was 3-0 as Son finished off a flowing move that was started by Hugo Lloris, although again the Palace defending was non-existent. Some quick passing in midfield from Winks and Christian Eriksen opened up the space for Aurier to deliver yet another fine ball and Son took advantage of Joel Ward's missed header to control a volley into the net.
More gains were to come down the Palace left on 42 minutes when Spurs scored with their fourth shot on target. Kane provided the service this time after taking Sakho out wide. He made space for a clever first-time cross that took Gary Cahill out of the game and Lamela was this time on hand to slide home - his first home goal for over a year.
Palace managed to keep their sheets clean in the second half but it was more a case of Spurs firmly taking their foot off the accelerator.
The South Korean sensation loves playing Palace. He wrote himself into the history books back in April when scoring the first goal at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in a 2-0 win against the south Londoners - amazingly that was his last Premier League goal before this encounter. He broke his 13-game drought with a confident finish inside the box before skilfully controlling a volley for his second one. His link play with Kane was sublime throughout - they now have scored 92 goals in 70 Premier League starts together.
"Today showed the team was unsettled. When a squad is unsettled it's so difficult to perform. I'm not complaining but in football it is so easy to discuss situations. The focus wasn't to play football, it wasn't to try and improve.
"When you have no focus, it's not easy to perform. We have the quality to win games but we weren't focused. When we are focused it showed today what we can do in the first half. Today we had intensity and concentration - we know what we need to do. When you are able to do that, the quality appears. We have tremendous quality and unbelievable players.
"If we show that intensity, then for sure we will fight for big things.
"I am so happy to recover that feeling. Now we must keep pushing. That was the first step of the season."
"We are obviously unhappy with our first-half performance. All of us are prepared to accept the responsibility for that. We didn't show the intensity I hoped we would, but I don't want to take too much away from Tottenham during that spell because they played very well," he said.
"I am glad it didn't become more than four. That is bad enough, so I didn't want any more.
"The only real positive I can take from the game is Mamadou Sakho, after such a long lay-off and such a long time out through injury, got through 90 minutes in a very tough game."
Tottenham travel to Greece to play Olympiakos on Tuesday (5.55pm kick-off) in their opening Champions League encounter while Palace host Wolves next Sunday (2pm kick-off).
