Tottenham Hotspur v Stoke City 26 Feb

Tottenham Hotspur 4 Stoke 0

Goal Scorers H Kane (14, 32, 37), D Alli (45+1)
As any seasoned football fan will tell you, you should never underestimate any Premier League team when they are playing at home or away. That’s generally what punters need to keep in mind, even if the bookies have one team pencilled in as the clear favourite.

Well, as it turned out, the end result of the Tottenham Hotspur vs. Stoke City went exactly the way that the bookies had predicted. Tottenham needed to bounce back from the defeat to Liverpool on Feb 11. Kicking off at 1:30pm on Sunday the 26th February at White Hart Lane, 31864 fans crammed into the stadium to see if Stoke could improve on their 4-0 beating by Spurs in the previous match at the Potteries.

The first 37 minutes of this match were dominated completely by Tottenham, and it was the day when star forward Harry Kane was going to shine. In those opening thirty seven minutes he managed to net three outstanding goals, much to the approval of the home supporters. The big number 10 is one of their own, after all.

However, the match wasn’t going to finish in a three goal win for Spurs as Dele Alli stepped forward to bag another. The fourth goal duly sent the home supporters into an even bigger frenzy, and killed off any thoughts that Stoke City may have had of getting back into the match.

Stoke were the rank underdogs from the start, and played as such. In fact during the entire game it was only former Spurs forward Peter Crouch who nearly offered them a slight flicker of hope just before the break. However he didn’t manage to score.

Both Tottenham and Stoke played the exact same team line ups as in their previous matches, which for Stoke was a Premier League match and for Tottenham it was the same line up as in their Europa League match played midweek.

Whilst Spurs players and of course fans were somewhat sickened by the outcome of that Europa League match, they certainly had plenty of reasons to be happy again during this one-sided match, and the delirious roars of approval at Kane’s impressive hat trick echoed around the stadium.

Many Spurs fans were expecting Harry Kane to get his 100th goal for the team during this match and it was after just 14 minutes when they got to witness his first of the eventual hat trick. The second and third goals came in the 32nd and 37th minutes.
It was into one minute of stoppage time just before the half time whistle blew that Alli scored the fourth and what turned out to be the final goal of this match. Whilst there were a few additional chances in the second half there were no more goals.

Although some had maybe expected an even bigger result after the break, with Tottenham already 4 up, the home side will be happy to have kept a clean sheet in the second stanza and to pick up all three points.
It was certainly smiles all round for all Tottenham after this match. Whilst they were clear favourites, Stoke offered little and the match was put out of their reach with relative ease. Man of the Match was an easy decision: Harry Kane.