Tottenham 1-1 Leicester City: player ratings to the theme of famous Drews

Tottenham Hotspur drew with Leicester City 1-1 at White Hart Lane on Saturday in what was a pretty average match that came down to a penalty and a defensive error. It wasn’t exactly a pretty game to watch, but neither was it especially catastrophic. After all, Spurs are still unbeaten in the Premier League, but they also haven’t won a match since dismantling Manchester City.

So, the ratings theme. I know, it’s Halloween, but I’m tired of Halloween stuff, and we’ve pretty much played out the Halloween theme in recent years. So I stole an idea from user @swampjankins on Twitter: thanks to all our recent draws, let’s rank the Tottenham Hotspur players to the theme of famous Drews.

So that’s what we’re doing.

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5 stars: Nancy Drew

Yes, yes, yes, she’s a total Mary Sue. I know. But for generations of girls who read her books, she was the feminist equivalent of the Hardy Boys, and as a character she inspired generations of now-influential women including Sandra Day O’Connor and Sonia Sotomayor. Her books are, at best, mediocre, relying on deus ex machinas, contrived situations, and Nancy’s unkillable nature as she stalks her way, flashlight in hand, to solving mystery after mystery. Her character, however, is pretty bad-ass and my daughter loves her. Suck it, Scooby-Doo.

This was an average game. Nobody deserves to be Nancy Drew in this match.

4 stars: Bryce Drew

Bryce Drew was the Golden Boy of Valparaiso basketball. The younger son of then-Valpo coach Homer Drew, he turned down big-time offers to play basketball for his dad and became a stand-out star who then went into coaching. He succeeded his dad as head coach at Valpo before leaving this summer to take over the Vanderbilt program. Oh, and he also gave us this shot over Ole Miss, which will live on forever in NCAA basketball lore.

Jan Vertonghen: If there’s a bright side to Toby Alderweireld going down, it’s that we’ve gotten to see just how good Jan Vertonghen really is. Not only did he effectively marshall Spurs’ defense, but he also went into YOLO mode and one of Spurs’ best attackers in the second half, smacking a header off the bar and trying a few decent shots from deep.

Dele Alli: You could tell that Dele was one of Spurs’ more dangerous attacking players against Leciester, because the Foxes essentially tried to foul him every time he touched the ball. Frustrating for Dele, but he earned a number of free kicks in dangerous areas and had a beauty go off the crossbar.

Danny Rose: Solid defensively, looked pretty good going forward, but his crossing was suuuuper wasteful. That said, a good game from him.

3 stars: Drew Barrymore

Drew Barrymore was the cutie-pie in Steven Spielberg’s ET, struggled with drug and alcohol addiction as a young adult, and then overcame it to have a moderately successful acting career. We should celebrate this. There are undoubtedly better better Drews, but Barrymore is a pretty good one.

Kyle Walker: Overall a nice game for Kyle, who ran the flanks effectively and essentially neutralized Riyad Mahrez. Didn’t recover well to mark Musa on the goal, but that goal is like 90% Wanyama, 10% him. Happy overall with his game.

Hugo Lloris: Maaaaaaaaaybe should’ve done better on Ahmed Musa’s goal, but that’s probably a little harsh. He did fine otherwise, and I was pleased with his distribution in this game.

Vincent Janssen: Got a goal from the PK, probably should’ve had another, and was working his butt off out there. If he was only able to sort out his end product he’d be higher up the list.

Eric Dier: Dier was, again, a capable not-Toby. As far as not-Tobys go, he was fine. As far as Tobys go, he’s definitely Not Toby™. Please come back soon, Toby.

GK N’Koudou: Normally we wouldn’t rate N’Koudou since he was only in for a few minutes, but he was lively in his cameo and did well. Perhaps he might have had a more positive impact on the game if he had been subbed in earlier? Makes u think.

2 stars: Drew Lachey

He’s the lesser of the two Lachey brothers that were in god-awful boy-band 98º. But to his credit at least he had the intelligence not to marry Jessica Simpson.

Christian Eriksen: One of the more meh games I’ve seen from Christian this season. A lot of fans have been overly harsh on him this season, but he didn’t do much to refute those claims against Leicester.

Son Heung-Min: Remember when Sonny was playing lights out and scoring goals from nothing? That was awesome. Please start doing that again, Sonny, because whatever it is you’re doing now isn’t working.

Mousa Dembele: As far as strength on the ball goes, he was more or less the Moose we remember. I’m not sure if his somewhat meh game against the Foxes was due to playing with Wanyama instead of Dier in the midfield, but as far as being that dynamic link between the defense and the attack, he didn’t have it on Saturday.

1.5 stars: Dr. Drew

Sure, we’ve all seen him on Celebrity Rehab and various other talk shows trying to get coke-addled D-list celebrities on the straight and narrow. And the reason that his reality shows were so popular was that the personalities that he had in his rehab centers kept relapsing, dropping out, coming back in later, and displaying absolutely terrible behavior. Which tells me that not only is Dr. Drew using the fame of others to directly benefit himself, but also he’s pretty bad at his actual job of getting people not to abuse drugs.

Victor Wanyama: Put Wanyama deep and ask him to f**k shit up Sandro-style and he’s great. The 4-1-4-1 was built around that. Put him in a double pivot and he’s been pretty meh because he’s not an accomplished passer of the ball. This was one of his worst games in a Spurs shirt, and he was directly responsible for Leicester’s goal... that misplayed pass was incredibly poor. With Toby likely out now through the North London Derby, we’re going to need him to bounce back and play well, and for Pochettino to effectively utilize his strengths.

1 star: Drew Peterson

Remember the Stacy Peterson murder investigation from a decade ago? Yeah, this is that guy. He also murdered another one of his wives, Kathleen Savio, and then admitted to killing Stacy while in prison. There are a lot of bad Drews, but this Drew is the worst, hands down.

No Tottenham Hotspur players were as bad as convicted murderer Drew Peterson.

No rating: Harry Winks