by Son Heung-min was the last player off the pitch at half-time at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, not because he was busy pumping the badge on his chest, working the crowd or slapping the referee behind the arm , but because he was exhausted, forced to spend 30 seconds or so bent double in the Newcastle penalty area with his hands on his knees.
Two minutes before half time Mac had picked up the ball 15 yards inside his own half and just flew onto the burners, his feet hitting the turf like a boxer hitting a speed ball. It is very rare to see a footballer striding further and further from his pursuit with the ball at his feet, flowing faster than you can run.
Related: Richarlison scores twice as Tottenham run riot against Newcastle
A good move by Lewis Miley, but Mac got straight out, taking the ball 40 yards and playing a sideline pass that ended with Richarlison narrowly missing. Spurs were 2-0 up at that point. Mac had taken both of them from a rejigged position wide on the left wing, from which he injured Kieran Trippier during that lung-burning first half.
Fast forward to 83 minutes and Mac could be seen skittering through the centre, recast in the role of the hyper-mobile No. 9. Martin Dubravka brought it down. Mac saw the ball and turned the penalty kick into the corner to make it 4-0 in a game that would end 4-1 to Spurs.
The numbers are worth waiting for. Mac is now 31 and in his ninth year at Spurs. The goal had 10 plus four assists in the league this season. He will close 400 games, more than any other non-British player in the club’s history, Chris Hughton aside. This is an era now.
Mac was uncharacteristically blunt after the defeat at West Ham, pointing out that Spurs’ attack had failed to drive the stake home. And there was anger in his performance here, relentless, eager to keep coming, as Tottenham finished the game with 23 shots against Newcastle.
There were mitigating factors for the visitors, it is clear that the whole team is out on their feet. But Son’s use as an orthodox left-winger was also crucial, a change of shape that helped break the game open in that crucial period in the first half.
This is one of the somewhat lost aspects of modern system-play. A winger can be on his back but, where a more old-school approach would be to get the ball to that side as often as possible and open up the weak spot, teams will stick to their pre-drilled patterns . .
Twenty minutes can pass before another opportunity arrives to drive home the advantage. Full roasts are rare. But Trippier was toast here, as Ange Postecoglou started Dejan Kulusevski as a central attacking midfielder, while Son clamped down on the left.
The stadium was a beautiful sight at the start, with a pitch-black sky above the huge industrial lattice roof, the golden rooster towering back, Batman-style, above the house.
Spurs made all the early runs and scored with 26 minutes gone, Mac’s goal streaking in from the left flank, cutting right then left, then flicking a perfect pass into the six yard box where, naturally , Destiny Udogie, head of the world. was less of a full-back who was scrambling to score his first Spurs goal.
Mac also scored a second goal, taking a long diagonal pass that grazed Trippier’s head, drifting from side to side, waiting for Trippier to lose his balance, then rising inside and flicking the ball back to Richarlison would finish.
Newcastle turned the tide after half time. Miley and Trippier were much more aggressive when getting close to Son, which prevented the spaces he found in the first half. Still Spurs refused to take the air out of the game, breaking forward at pace when they gained possession.
At one point Jamaal Lascelles was booked for holding onto the back of Son’s shirt with one hand as he dived after him near the center circle, skating behind like Marty McFly hitting a hoverboard.
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A minute later it was 3-0, the goal made by a perfectly lofted diagonal pass from Pedro Porro, and finished by Richarlison.
A win leaves Spurs in fifth place, which feels fine. More to the point it puts an end to a terrible run. There was already a certain amount of Anger, which was behind the love-in, Spurs-out-of-Woodstock dynamic. Nobody likes a nice guy, not in football anyway. Where does this blog get, exactly, that it doesn’t look like it’s tortured or angry?
But to Postecoglou’s credit the performance here was also based on that slight tactical change, a moment that speaks well of the coach who, lest we forget, is performing at a higher level than anything else in his career so far.
The Premier League is a very high level of competition these days. Are you really just running towards that danger, it’s Bazball, refusing to back down, even when it might be a good idea to back you up?
The most exciting part of this victory, like the point at the Etihad Stadium, is that flexibility.
