Aston Villa vs. Tottenham Hotspur: Player ratings to the theme of Sesame Street Characters

No matter what you thought of the game yesterday, the important thing was that Tottenham Hotspur got three points against an Aston Villa team that is very tough at home. There weren't a ton of stellar performances in this match, so the ratings might not be as generous as in the past. This week's theme is Sesame Street characters. There's a ton of characters and almost all of them are awesome, so if I didn't list one of your favorites, I'm sorry.

5 Stars - Grover

I know what you're all thinking. You're probably wondering why more iconic characters like Big Bird or Elmo aren't five stars. Well, first of all Big Bird is a dick, which I'll address later and Elmo is singlehandedly responsible for many sleepless nights in my childhood because my sister had one of those damn Tickle-Me Elmo dolls and it went off all the time because the cats loved to play with it. Grover was just cool, plus little me loved him because he was Blue.

Andros Townsend: A man of the match performance for the brave England national team member. Townsend's goal may have been a little flukey (Come at me, Bro), but the rest of his performance wasn't. An excellent game overall.

4 Stars - Bert & Ernie

Sesame Streets version of the odd couple consistently delivered memorable moments. I don't care what some weirdos may think of their living arrangement or their relationship. They're awesome. Who could ever not remember the words to the Rubber Ducky song? Additionally, Bert's fun idiosyncrasies made me think that I was a mostly normal kid, so that was nice.

Sandro: The Brazilian midfielder made his first Premier League start of the season and didn't disappoint. He broke up play well and won his share of aerial duels when Villa started lumping the ball forward.

Roberto Soldado: He scored a lovely goal from open play. He also made three key passes and his hold up play was great. Though he was isolated at times, the Spaniard still made a good impact and showed just why he's preferred to Jermain Defoe.

Michael Dawson: I waffled on this one. I think Dawson has looked bad at times this season, but against Villa he played well. His aerial presence was particularly key in this match because it doesn't seem like Chiriches is too good in the air and Spurs needed someone to win headers once Benteke came on.

3 Stars - Mr. Snuffleupagus

I really like Snuffy, but he's such a sad character. Did you know that from 1971 to 1985 Big Bird was the only person that could see Snuffy? Adults on the show used to make fun of Big Bird for thinking Snuffy existed and the dumb bird did nothing about it. In fact, he often blamed bad things that happened on Snuffy. Way to shit on imaginary friends Sesame Street. In fact, the only reasonSnuffy was actually introduced to the adults on the show's cast was because of a string of gross pedophelia and child abuse stories airing on the news at the time. The show's creators were worried that kids would believe that adults wouldn't listen to them when they tried to tell them things like that.

Paulinho: As Lennon's Eyebrow said earlier today, Paulinho spent 30 minutes of yesterday's match looking like a lost child and the other 60 remembering where the opponent's penalty area was. He was dangerous at times, but his tactical awareness is still lacking. If he had connected with that header in the second half he might have gotten four stars. He did get an assist though.

Kyle Walker: His pace was integral to containing Gabby Agbonlahor on the flanks and he overlapped well with Townsend. He was fine this match.

Vlad Chirches: The Romanian made his first ever Premier League start and he looked pretty good. He completed 86% of his passes and added a tackle. This was a pretty decent introduction to the English game for him.

Hugo Lloris: He made a really good save on an early free kick, but didn't have much else to do this game. I'd have given him four stars, but his distribution was uncharacteristically poor, perhaps due to the wet conditions.

Lewis Holtby: It looked like Holtby had problems getting involved, particularly early in the match and he often dropped to deep, leaving Soldado isolated up top. His involvement with the second goal was nice though.

Aaron Lennon: Lennon made his return to the lineup following a long injury layoff. He didn't get on the ball much, but he did an excellent job defensively. It looked like Lennon had been given a clear job by Andre Villas-Boas and that was to maintain width and close down the opposition fullback. He did just that and as a late game sub he did really well.

2 Stars - Oscar the Grouch

Oscar the Grouch taught me everything I needed to know about sarcasm as a child, but let's be honest he's also responsible for most of the dickishness in children and young adults. His I hate everything attitude has permeated a lot of society nowadays. Ok, that was a little deep. Oscar gets two stars because he lives in a trashcan and probably smells funny.

Jan Vertonghen: I saw some people praising the Belgian for his performance at left back, but I didn't see much of anything to warrant it. He dwelled to long on the ball and played a few too many balls that put his teammates under pressure. His passing accuracy was the worst of all of Spurs' defenders.

Gylfi Sigurdsson: One thing that Gylfi did well yesterday was keeping width. He was out on the left more often in one match than he had been the entire rest of the season. Other than that, he didn't do much.

Mousa Dembele and Jermaine Defoe: Not enough time on the pitch to really make an impact on their rating. It's awesome to be able to through on Dembele for an attacking midfielder late in the match to kill things off. Defoe came on and did things. Unfortunately none of those things were good enough to deserve a bump up in rating.

1 Star - Elmo

Maybe it's just my anti-Tickle-Me Elmo bias, but this is one Sesame Street Character I never liked. I'm sure he plays great to younger characters, but I always viewed him as a red, more shrill version of Grover and I would tolerate no challengers to Grover's throne. I know Elmo is almost universally loved, but I always changed the channel to cartoons whenever an Elmo segment came on. I'd rather watch those Aliens that only say "Yup" than Elmo.

No Tottenham Hotspur players were as bad or annoying as Elmo.