Lloris - 6 - Shaky handling, but some good saves
Dier - 4 - Poor. Offered little going forward and looked dodgy at the back
Fazio - 6 - Ok
Vertonghen - 6 - Same
Davies - 7 - Quite good going forward in the second half
Mason - 7 - Fairly anonymous first half but did well in he second, good passing.
Dembele - 4 - Crap. Offered very little as an attacking outlet and didn't protect the defence enough when it was 11 v 11
Eriksen - 7 - Quiet first half, but the second was as good as he's played for us, some nice passes, a great free-kick for the first goal and then a brilliantly taken second to win the game
Lamela - 6 - Really like his work rate, but gives the ball away so often
Soldado - 6 - Some really nice link-up play, but missed a good chance
Kane - 3 - Awful. Luckily scored a tap-in into an open goal, but this was a really poor performance from him in a game that he shouldn't have started. Missed a really good headed chance from close range, gave the ball away a lot, slowed the play down and generally offered very little. Yeah he's "one of our own", but we need far better than this leading the line.
Subs:
Chiriches - 7 - Didn't have much defending to do in the second half, but he offered much more going forward than Dier
Lennon - 7 - Changed the game when he came on, good direct running at pace to tire Hull out and he delivered some decent balls into the box. I have no idea why he isn't starting as our wing play has been very poor this season.
Paulinho - N/A - Nothing of note
Poch - 6 - Poor starting line-up. A lot of people have been calling for Kaboul, Capoue, Rose and Adebayor to be dropped, but this wasn't the set-up to go for. We had Michael Dawson at Spurs for many years, we know full well that the type of striker he flourishes against are slow and unskilled players like Kane. We know that he's good at dealing with high balls and making last ditch blocks and challenges in crowded spaces. We know that the situation he struggles in is when a fast attacker with good dribbling technique is running at him in space. So why play such a narrow and slow attack in the first half? We should have started with Lennon to widen the play and isolate him against Lamela's pace. It didn't work and we were poor in the first half. Also Stambouli should have started ahead of Dembele as Hull caused us a lot of problems from not having a proper DM in the middle.
Poch has been criticised for failing to make the correct tactical decisions, and yes we got lucky with the red card, but the substitutions and second half switches made a big difference and won the game for us. It was a big call to take off Dier for Vlad with a like for like RB substitution when we're chasing a goal, but it worked well as Vlad gave us more attacking width. Once they went down to 10 men, he recognised what needed to be done and brought on Lennon on one wing, with Lamela moving to the other, ensuring our we widened the play, thus making more space to use our extra man advantage. You might look at it and say he was reckless, going all out attack against the 10 men and we got lucky with a late goal, but we firmly made our advantage count as Hull hardly had a sniff in the second half. It was nerve racking, but remember that Soldado, Kane and Lamela all missed very good chances to get the second goal, had they scored earlier it would have felt a lot more comfortable.
