Brentford 2-2 Tottenham: New season kicks off with draw

It’s a new season for Tottenham Hotspur and once more the team shows its ups and downs, as they drew level with Brentford 2-2 to open the 2023-24 Premier League season.

Under the direction of Ange Postecoglou, this new style of play is fortified to attack, attack, attack, while being susceptible in the back. We saw this as the fullbacks of Emerson Royal and Destiny Udogie went up more to leave the two center-backs Micky van de Ven and the likes of Cristian Romero (for 13 minutes) and Davinson Sanchez sprinting back on the counter-attacks.

Spurs grabbed the first goal of the game as James Maddison whizzed in a free kick — which he won — to the middle of the box for a powerful header by Romero. Waiting for the VAR ruling to go through, Romero earned himself the first goal of the campaign but quickly came off as Big Ange cared about the safety of the center-back as he had concussion-like symptoms.

Brentford leveled the game off a penalty — Son Heung-min clipped Mathias Jensen in the box — with Bryan Mbeumo sending Guglielmo Vicario the wrong way.

Minutes later the Bees took the lead with Rico Henry funneling down the channel to beat Emerson Royal and deliver a ball to the middle of the box for Yoane Wissa to hit a low-driven shot that was slightly deflected by van de Ven and past the diving Vicario.

Thinking once more that Spurs are going to struggle as they struggled to break down the Brentford defense, it was a lovely strike by Royal that brought the game level.

Once more the attack went through Maddison as he received the ball and tried to make a move past a Brentford defender and drew what he thought would be a free-kick. Not hearing a whistle and the ball just above the box, Royal took a first-time strike past one defender and the outstretched Mark Flekken.

Second half didn’t bring as much goal involvement, but it was Spurs ability to recover and keep Brentford on the back foot more than anything. No more sinking feeling to wait for the final whistle.

Notes:

• Yves Bissouma is fully confident in this system.
• Maddison seems to be the answer after three years of waiting for Christian Eriksen’s replacement in January of 2020.
• Goals are going to happen both for and against Spurs. It is the way the style of play happens.
• Udogie and van de Ven are pacey as hell and it is going to be fun watching them. It will be tough as they seem to be the last-ditch effort to keep goals out, but their pace will allow so much recovery
• Sarr and Perisic had cameos to make an impression. Its good to see a manager not afraid to use subs when needed.
• Spurs finished the game with 69 percent of possession and had 18 shots. This is something that we have seen all pre-season for the team