Two of our scorers against Portsmouth have good reason to enjoy playing in this fixture. Jermain Defoe scored on his club debut on 7th February 2004, when we just managed to beat Portsmouth by 4-3, thanks to Gus Poyet's knee! Defoe had scored the first goal of the game in the 13th minute with a low right footed drive, after a long ball by Ledley King had been flicked on by Keane.
Mido, of course, had a spectacular debut against Portsmouth in February this year, scoring two goals in our 3-1 win. He remains the club's top goalscorer this season, with 6,followed jointly by Robbie Keane and Defoe, who both have 4 goals to their name. Behind them, on three goals for the campaign so far is the skipper Ledley King, who prodded the first of our three goals at Charlton, and then headed against Arsenal from a similar position to his goal this week.
Just to confirm that Spurs are assured of their place above the gooners this Christmas. The last time this happened was the 94-95 season. Before Christmas that year, Spurs were in 10th place, with 26 points from 19 games, whilst our enemies were one place behind us with 24 points. Spurs went on to maintain their superiority over their rivals, who actually finished in the bottom half (12th), while we made our highest Premiership place - seventh.
What we all want of course, is for that superiority to be maintained for the rest of the season, not just the festive period, which is sure to be a happy one for Spurs fans. Martin Jol is certainly not over-stating our potential, and we too must not get carried away, remembering that we have yet to truly assert ourselves on the pitch. Whilst we have won four of our games by two goals, we need to win by such margins more often!
Sorry to talk about "The Others" still more, but I must remind you that they have lost back to back Premiership games for the first time in 5 years (according to my research), when they lost to Everton and Leeds in November, 2000. I hope to have to look up their last run of three consecutive league defeats this week-end!
Still on the same track, Bolton conceded their first home League goal for 666 minutes this week, when Angel scored his first of the season to equalise Gobber Diouf's goal.
Results 10-14.12.05
B'mingham 1-0 Fulham
Blackburn 3-2 West Ham
Bolton 1-1 A. Villa
Charlton 2-0 S'derland
Chelsea 1-0 Wigan
Liverpool 2-0 M'brough
West Brom 2-0 Man City
Newcastle 1-0 Arsenal
Man Utd 1-1 Everton
Spurs 3-1 P'tsmouth
Everton 1-2 West Ham
Man Utd 4-0 Wigan
FA Barclays Premiership
Pos Team P W D L F A GD Pts
1 Chelsea 16 14 1 1 35 7 28 43
2 Man Utd 16 10 4 2 29 14 15 34
3 Liverpool 15 9 4 2 20 8 12 31
4 Spurs 16 8 6 2 22 13 9 30
5 Bolton 15 8 3 4 18 14 4 27
6 Arsenal 15 8 2 5 22 13 9 26
7 West Ham 16 7 4 5 23 18 5 25
8 Wigan 16 8 1 7 16 18 -2 25
9 Man City 16 7 3 6 20 16 4 24
10 Newcastle 16 6 4 6 14 15 -1 22
11 Charlton 15 7 1 7 21 23 -2 22
12 Blackburn 16 6 3 7 18 22 -4 21
13 M'brough 16 5 4 7 20 23 -3 19
14 A. Villa 16 4 5 7 16 24 -8 17
15 Everton 16 5 2 9 9 19 -10 17
16 Fulham 16 4 4 8 16 21 -5 16
17 West Brom 16 4 4 8 17 24 -7 16
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18 B'mingham 15 3 3 9 10 19 -9 12
19 P'tsmouth 16 2 4 10 12 26 -14 10
20 S'derland 17 1 2 14 14 35 -21 5
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