Sorry, what? I took issue with the statement of “best English football has to offer”. That’s objectively verifiable it wasn’t and given how few English players played this week, I have a hard time proclaiming it even English. How many current or future English national team members played this week of the 3 English players in your team? :/
Yeah, yet just equal if not more chances for us and a ball on the post in each second leg with the difference that your team capitalised on a mistake at the 2-2 and got lucky in the last seconds while throwing everyone to the front in a last ditch attempt.
What your team did, while effective in the end, wasn’t great to watch, it wasn’t organised and it wasn’t that great over two legs. You lucked out while Ajax was sadly highly inefficient with the busload of chances created and saying otherwise would be arrogant.
And that’s certainly a great achievement, which I’m not questioning at all, even congratulated you, but it’s not “the
best English football can provide”. :/
On the other hand, if you’re saying the EPL is nearly on par with the Eredivisie quality wise...
Wasn’t it me who said Sissoko and Llorente were actually the best thing you had going last match exactly because he handled the long balls well and gave you possession near Ajax’ box and Sissoko’s physical play helped in the midfield battle? Hmm... yes, yes it was. Maybe I already gave your team credit for that strategy last time, without actually having to dub this the best football ever from English teams? Ajax performed admirably, but they should have finished it off with both more goals and more effective stalling. Ajax made mistakes and you took advantage of it. Let’s be realistic here, without Ajax’ inefficiency with chances created, the “best the EPL has to offer”, would have been a 5-3 or 6-3 loss and a 0-2 or 1-3 match in your home leg. But it’s definitely full credit to Tottenham that they didn’t give up at 2-0 (3-0 agg) and worked hard to overcome the odds.
Given Ajax got an equal amount of good chances as Tottenham including hitting the post and several shots on goal and that went barely wide in the second half and Tottenham getting lucky on the 2-2 by an error, I can’t say I agree with your analysis at all. You are trying to turn a narrow, but well and hard fought win on aggregate draw into an exceptional pwnage performance when you say the “best English football has to offer”, which it wasn’t. However, it was a tremendous feat against all odds, which is an achievement in a different category: some of the more unlikely turn-arounds in high stakes games. I bare no ill will towards Tottenham for achieving it, even though it was as you can imagine a huge anti-climax having been on the winning hand for approximately 168 minutes and some added time.
That said, hope Tottenham wins it. It’s a third of an Ajax team afterall. Couldn’t have done it without some of the best the Eredivisie had to offer seven years ago.