A magnificent seven Premier League teams have managed to find themselves 5-0 down before half-time, and only one of them faster than Tottenham’s brave comedy heroes succeeded in so doing at St James’ Park on Sunday afternoon.
Here’s the full list of hilarity, ranked by the dizzying speed with which the poor sods found themselves 5-0 down…
18 minutes – Manchester City v Watford, September 2019
Not a great surprise to see Manchester City or indeed, with all due respect, Watford involved here is it? David Silva started the carnage in the opening minute before Sergio Aguero’s penalty made it 2-0 before seven minutes were played. Riyad Mahrez got the third and Bernardo Silva the fourth inside a quarter of an hour (he’d complete a hat-trick in the second half) and Nicolas Otamendi made it 5-0 three minutes later. In extraordinary scenes, City inexplicably failed to add a sixth goal before the break. Six first-half goals for a Premier League team remains a white whale.
Final score: Manchester City 8-0 Watford
21 minutes – Newcastle v Tottenham, April 2023
There’s a general theme to these, and that is ‘Good Team v Shit Team’. Spurs are (and top boffins will dedicate their lives to working out precisely how and why without any success while driving themselves to insanity) still somehow fifth in the Premier League table. They are, quite obviously, very, very shit but technically their so-called ‘league’ ‘position’ at this late stage of the season does make this an astonishing outlier here, even if they are now firmly on course to finish eighth. Spurs played a back four for the first time since a 2-0 defeat at Chelsea in January last year and it went instantly, horrifically, hilariously wrong.
Part of the problem is that Antonio Conte’s time at Spurs was Schrodinger’s Reign, one in which he was simultaneously ‘not backed’ by the club yet also allowed to so utterly remould the squad in his own image in the space of 18 months that they no longer possess the necessary constituent parts to field something as basic as a back four. With Pedro Porro and Ivan Perisic involved, it was really a back two. A back two containing Eric Dier and the increasingly unhinged Cristian Romero.
Frankly, it’s a surprise it took almost 70 seconds for Jacob Murphy to open the scoring. Joelinton added a second after sauntering through a phantom defence before Murphy slapped home a third on nine minutes. A quickfire Alexander Isak double made it…
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