Everton 1 - 2 Tottenham

Alas, this is even less of a match report than usual. Not because I plan to go on a rant about the brilliance of my boys and the joy of beating Everton away after having been beaten by them at home early in the season. Which I no doubt would. No, it is because I was unable to see the game at all. In Sweden in general, and in my favourite pub - Sir Toby's - in particular, all the games can be seen on television; the game against Sheffield United was, surprisingly, not shown by Swedish Canal Plus, but the lads in the pub managed to find an Arabic (!) channel which had it on. English commentary and all. Now that, friends, is a great sports bar...

Last night, despite the piling up of Champions League fixtures, I know they would have put it on somewhere for us but because I now live a train ride away (it used to be a 10 minute walk), and because there was a fierce blizzard going on, I decided to stay in my home town. The prospect of defying an onslaught of snow that late in the evening was not very appealing. I did walk into town here, however, on the off-hand chance that the only sports bar here could be persuaded to let me see the game... but to no avail. The Champions League took precedent and the pub was absolutely packed with Swedes eager to see Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Chelsea in general and Barca v. Liverpool. In the end I opted for Barca - Liverpool, and it was quite entertaining. Small consolation for missing the only truly important game, but anyway. Good news were waiting at home when I had survived the trip - the bus nearly drove off the road, one man fell over when we disembarked and after I had helped him get up (we were in a big pile of snow) I promptly collided with a sign post which was hidden in a cloud of snow. All of which seemed comical (and I suppose it was) when I saw the result.

I suppose I could go on a small little general rant, based on the newspaper reports which suggest that we outplayed Everton for most of the game and truly deserved the win. And I'm familiar enough with the movements of the lads to be able to happily imagine what the goals looked like simply from description. I would still be cautious about declaring the "crisis" over and see this as conclusive evidence that we weill win all our games from now on - partly because I don't think the "crisis" ever was too bad and partly because consistency does not come from 2 wins in a row... But if the lads keep up this kind of work, if the "steel" which we lacked earlier really is here to stay, then the only way is up. Interestingly, the next fixture will bring this to the test: the Trotters are exactly the sort of team which would trot all over us in the soft mode. On Sunday we will need all the steel we can muster but all of the sudden I look forward to this game with more happy expectation than nervous apprehension... Bolton - bring it on!