Rafa clearly believed in the power of his groin a little too much

“Pay your tax, my lord, pay your tax,” the Aston Villa fans sang to Harry Redknapp, to the tune of ‘Kumbaya’, during the second half on Monday night. Within seconds, the home crowd replied in near unison with: “2-0 down, my lord, 2-0 down, oh you’re 2-0 down.” The away support retreated, not to be heard from again for the rest of the match. Their team had long since given up.

Spurs soared into 3rd place with a 2-0 win that defied belief – how Adebayor, van der Vaart, Bale, Lennon, Parker and Modric could tear Villa to pieces with such regularity and only find the net twice will remain a mystery. Replicating the sort of glorious, incisive football that did for QPR several weeks ago, Spurs were perfect from one to eleven – not a single player didn’t carry out his job with anything short of clinical excellence.

From the phenomenally solid pairing of King and Kaboul at the back, to arguably the finest midfield pairing in the Premier League in Parker and Modric, all the way to the front four, Lennon, Bale, van der Vaart and Adebayor, who all looked completely able to interchange positions when needed. This was total football at close to its best – there must be a complaint, then to only score two goals after a display like that was ever-so-slightly frustrating.

After Adebayor had rediscovered his scoring touch with two opportunistic goals in the first half, attention turned to whether Spurs could survive the notoriously rocky opening 15 minutes of the second half, something they’ve seldom done in weeks gone by. And as soon as Darren Bent’s header was easily saved by Friedel and a couple of slightly loose passes had been played by those in lilywhite, Spurs produced one of the most dominant second half performances you’ll see all season, creating no less than about five or six glorious chances and passing the Villans to despair.

Every man did their bit. Walker and Lennon combined effectively on the right flank, using their pace to burn past Stephen Warnock time and time again. If anything, they were a bit starved of possession – a common sight in the second half was the pair of them stood, hands in the air, unmarked, desperate for the ball. When he got it, Lennon got to the byline with ease and delivered several crosses that should have been finished.

Bale on the other flank was just as impressive, having a hand in both goals and dealing easily with Villa’s odd plan to play two right backs. It was a miserable night for former Spur Alan Hutton, who was deployed at right wing to help Villa double up on the flying Welshman. It couldn’t have worked any worse and it portrayed a negative game plan.

Parker was, as usual, utterly superb as he linked with van der Vaart and Modric… ah, Modric. I still find it impossible to be completely enamoured with him given all that went down over the summer but I’ll be damned if he’s not the finest player to play for this club in a seriously long time. His second half display was a masterclass in ball retention and gap finding. His first touch would make Jesus envious. His ability to read the game puts him on a par with anyone else in the Premier League or even the world. In those second 45 minutes at the Lane on Monday night, Modric was absolutely world class (yes, that’s an overused phrase but he was that good).

And then there’s Adebayor. We’re all too aware of how the deal might not be perfect – he’s likely to only be a short term fix for a long term problem. But when he plays like this, it’s almost enough to banish the painful memories of last season and Pavlyuchenko and Crouch lumbering around with little or no aim. His effort level was superb: if he lost the ball, he’d sprint into our half to get it back; if he missed a chance (and, let’s face it, he missed a few), he’d visibly chastise himself and work doubly harder to execute the next move flawlessly. Messi apart, no striker is perfect and chances can and will be missed from time to time. But in Adebayor, Spurs finally have a striker who can do it all: score, run, win the ball in the air, protect it, retain possession, drift onto the wing, beat his marker, all of it. Whoever the next striker is, they need to be able to do all that as effectively as Ade. Sorry Jermain, with all due respect, I don’t think it’ll be you.

So we’re finally up to 3rd and the next question to answer is: can we stay there? As ever, this blog will exercise nothing but caution. We’ll cling tightly to our ‘one game at a time’ mantra, especially with a series of fixtures ahead that, should we keep up our level of excellence, we should win. Attention can soon to turn to Chelsea at the Lane in December – a titanic game that could help to define our season.

But not yet. That wouldn’t be taking it one game at a time, would it?
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