West Ham 1-1 Tottenham: Three Things We Learned

The Premier League season is well underway with all 20 clubs making a pretty interesting start to proceedings from top to bottom. It’s already starting to look like the most competitive year of top flight action in a long time and last night, we saw further evidence of that when West Ham United played host to Tottenham Hotspur.

The two played out a thoroughly entertaining 1-1 draw at the London Stadium and today, we’re going to take a look at three things we came to learn in the wake of the full time whistle being blown.

The killer instinct

One of the biggest problems for Tottenham that holds them back from being genuine title contenders is their lack of a killer instinct. Sure, they were able to get on the scoresheet here, but a lot of players appear to be lacking confidence in front of goal. They’ve got a squad that’s full of talent and they controlled the possession stats throughout, but there’s still a lot of work to be done if they want to push beyond top four hopefuls.

Confidence is key

It’s a simple point but it’s an important one: confidence is everything at this level. West Ham United got back on the winning trail over the weekend and you could tell in this game that they’re starting to piece things together. They had plenty of shots on goal, the London Stadium was rocking and David Moyes wasn’t afraid to take risks despite them being overwhelmed for long spells off the ball.

VAR frustration

Antonio Conte was pretty vocal in his post-match interview about the VAR decision to overturn a penalty that was awarded to Tottenham in the first half. It took three minutes for the officials to make a judgement call on what happened with Cresswell eventually being deemed to have headed the ball before it struck his arm, but the amount of time taken alone is enough to incentivise those who hate the VAR system.