Tottenham Hotspur 4-2 Blackburn Rovers: Match Review

Reverse jinx perfectly executed.

Tottenham Hotspur got the league win they were due for against Blackburn Rovers after some struggles against teams they probably should have beaten. Sunderland's domination on Chelsea makes that result look better, but I still look at the two games prior to the Blackburn match as five points dropped. We're moving past those, though, and it felt really good to get three points on Saturday.

I struggled to decide how much of our offensive onslaught had to do with us being good and how much of it had to do with Blackburn being total crap, so I asked my friend and notorious footy neutral Richard Farley, SBNation's soccer editor. He goes with 37% Tottenham skill, 63% Blackburn fail. Sounds about right to me.

The first goal was a pretty sweet corner by Rafael van der Vaart and an equally nice header by Gareth Bale, but it's not like anyone contested Welsh Jesus. That goal is about 50-50 for cause. The second goal was the same deal, really. It was a great run and cross from Bale but there was no one within five yards of Pavlyuchenko. The third goal was more about Blackburn's fail, as Gael Givet touched what should have been an easy clearance right into the path of Peter Crouch. The fourth goal was just a cluster of lol.

Of course, there's the elephant in the room we don't want to acknowledge. The two goals we allowed at the end. Despite dominating the game for 80 minutes, Spurs did a Spurs and failed to keep a clean sheet, allowing two goals at the very end. David Dunn's 80th minute strike was a pretty good one and it took a deflection, but Jermaine Jenas really should have cleared the ball. The 90th minute goal by Givet was just a total fail on the part of Gomes. IT was typical Spurs. Ryan instant messaged me after the game saying he'd rather draw the game after the derby 0-0 than win 4-1 just so Spurs could keep a clean sheet. I don't blame him.

So, next week. The derby. Aaron Lennon, Ledley King, Michael Dawson, and Jermain Defoe are all dancing on the line of being fit or not fit. Tom Huddlestone is out. Arsenal fans are still mostly smug c u next Tuesdays. Notice I said most, I actually like Ted from The Short Fuse and Ben from SBNation soccer's front page.

Here's some highlights!

We'll have stuff all week leading up to the derby. I'd really like some fan posts from you guys about what the derby means to you, if anything, how you came to support the club, etc. in the run-up to the game. If they're coherently written and don't contain too much foul language, they'll get promoted to the front page. Do it.