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My kids are both lactose intolerant, which is a problem (for them) at major candy holidays like Easter and Halloween. But the unexpected bonus (for me) is that I get to go through their Easter baskets and take out all the candy they can’t have for myself. Sometimes it’s good to be the king.
Easter candy is one of the few times where you’re allowed, nay expected, to gorge yourself on sugary sweets when you’re a kid. But like so many things, there are good candies and bad candies. That’s why we’re here: to rank them to Tottenham Hotspur players.
Here are your player ratings for Spurs’ 4-0 win over Watford to the theme of Easter candy. FANK YOU EASTAH BUNNY BOK BOK
This is the perfect Easter candy. Cadbury milk chocolate nuggets, covered by a crunchy sugar shell in lovingly speckled pastel colors. The chocolate is very good - creamy and delicious - while the sugar shell adds a satisfying crunch that flakes off in large chunks under your teeth, assuming you bite it as opposed to just sucking it until the sugar dissolves to leave behind a molten chocolate interior. So good. It’s also egg-shaped, because aesthetics are important. This is the best Easter candy you can receive in your basket, and it’s not even especially close.
Son Heung-Min: Mauricio Pochettino opted to move Sonny from the #9 position against Swansea to his preferred role as an inside forward, and he was marvelous. His goals were well-taken and he should’ve scored at least a third, but got the yips on probably his easiest chance of the day. A well-deserved man of the match performance.
I am not speaking for my fellow writers here, except for Ben Daniels who is the only other one to agree with me that Cadbury Creme Eggs are good. Everyone else wanted to put them as the 1-star option. Well screw that, these are incredible, chocolately sugar bombs and deserve their place in the Easter candy pantheon. The toothsome quality of the chocolate leads to some sort of mystery filling that is somehow even sweeter than the chocolate is. I don’t want to know what they use to color the “yolk” in the center or what exactly is in them, but creme eggs are diabetes wrapped in aluminum foil and they are awesome.
Kieran Trippier: Full credit to Trippier, who was magnificent against Watford. He had acres of space to work with and took full advantage, notching an assist and creating five chances from his crossing. I’m sure it helped that Watford’s defense was basically held together with chewing gum and string, but that was probably the best match I’ve seen from him in a Spurs shirt.
Christian Eriksen: Boy oh boy was Christian good on Saturday. One assist, four chances created, and 88% pass completion against a pretty trash Watford team. If he had scored, he’d be up there with Sonny.
Mousa Dembele: Paired with his old buddy Eric Dier in the pivot again, Moose put in another dominating performance. After a slow start to the match, it was Spurs’ midfield that really put the work in to turn this match into a rout, and a lot of that had to do with Mousa.
Yes, these are essentially Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups with a different mold, and peanut butter cups are always a good choice, but there’s one key difference: in its egg incarnation there’s a higher ratio of peanut butter to chocolate than in the cup incarnation, and that pushes this treat up to the highest echelons of Easter candy goodness. If you get several of these eggs in your basket, you’ve done well.
Dele Alli: That goal. Oh my goodness. You can talk about the rest of his performance if you want, but that goal gives him four stars no matter what else he does in this match. World class.
Eric Dier: Eric’s goal looked easy, but that’s because he made it look that way. On replay, it’s a lot harder than what it looked like live. Dier was a beast in midfield, shielding the back four and spraying passes everywhere: he was 66 for 72 in pass completion.
Jelly beans are an Easter staple, and no list of Easter candy is complete without them, but there’s a high degree of variance in quality. At the top of the pile are the Jelly Bellys and the Starburst jelly beans, and at the bottom are the generic pastel beans that taste like solidified vaseline with a sugar crust. Still, you can’t have easter without them, and more often than not they’re at least passable.
Hugo Lloris: Watford made things interesting on the counter for the opening 30 minutes or so, and made Hugo do some actual work between the sticks. Nothing he couldn’t handle, and he had a pretty comfortable match otherwise. Which is good, because he was just coming off an illness and we were pretty close to starting Pau Lopez on Saturday.
Vincent Janssen: Pity poor Vincent. This was another promising match from him, who appears to be gaining confidence with every match, but he simply could not find the net again. He had one very nice turn and shot that forced a quality save from Gomes, and another opportunity to bundle one in off of his (ample) ass that went off the crossbar. A pity Kane’s back now and he won’t play again this season.
Janby Alderweirtonghen: Spurs’ Belgian defensive duo once again were able to cope well with the counterattacking threat posed by Watford’s defenders, and kept Troy Deeney more or less bottled up when he came on.
We’ve all been there. You see the chocolate rabbit with its cute ears, pot belly, and vaguely bemused expression peeking out of your basket, but when you bite into it you discover that it’s 90% air and 10% chocolate. Why do they do this? Why play with our emotions? We expect solid chocolate, and all we get are tears. Hollow rabbits are still chocolate, and chocolate is always good, but they are a lie.
Harry Kane: All I wanted out of Harry Kane was a decent shift to get him back to fitness for next week’s Bournemouth match (where I can watch him crust the Cherries in person). That’s pretty much what I got, except he also rattled the crossbar with the last kick of the match. Kane’s back, got the pressure of his return under his belt, and didn’t re-injure himself. Job done.
Ben Davies: A distinct improvement over the Swansea match, but I’m worried about him. He’s got a lot of minutes under his belt, and with Rose perhaps not returning for a little while yet I’m afraid we’re going to run him into the ground.
Full disclosure? I quite enjoy Peeps, but I acknowledge that this is not a high quality candy. It is marshmallow, vaguely chick-shaped, and covered with granulated sugar. It tastes like a cross between corn syrup and a styrofoam packing peanut. This is less a tasty treat and more a way to mainline sugar into your bloodstream. You might as well just toss a handful of sugar cubes in your mouth.
Moussa Sissoko: Had 15 minutes in relief, which is enough to get a rating. Didn’t do much apart from dribbling past one dude, a few safe passes, and fluffling one chance with his touch akin to that of a marble column. Better than his Burnley outing, but then, it’d have to be.
A chocolate egg with a toy inside? What’s not to love? Well, apparently a lot, since enough children choked on the plastic toy inside these treats at Eastertide that they are banned in the United States. I’m thinking a confectionary called “Kinder Eggs” that actually can kill children is probably not a good thing. (Plus the chocolate wasn’t that great anyway, IIRC)
No Tottenham Hotspur players were as bad as Kinder Eggs.
Josh Onomah