WE DID IT. I was at Peak Ironic Spurs Fan before the game simply because I have been expecting the worst ever since the quarterfinal draw drew us against City. But we did it. We won 1-0 at home. Now if we can score a single goal at the Etihad next week, City will need to score three in order to advance. Here’s what we learned: Defense wins—especially in late-stage cup competitions. If you want to go the stats route on this you can—scoring goals in soccer is really hard and statistically you’re better off trying to grind out results 1-0 than trying to win 4-3. Or you can look at the recent teams to excel in Europe. Even Barcelona and Real Madrid have been at their best when they know how to defend and grind out a result. Spurs turned in one of their best defensive performances of the season, limiting Manchester City to nine shots and .6 xG. City is averaging 2.4 xG per match in the Premier League so that gives you some sense for how much Spurs neutralized the City attack Tuesday night. xG map for Tottenham - Manchester City Pep set up City to defend with numbers and accept an away draw unless they got lucky. But his penalty got saved and Son did a great individual goal. pic.twitter.com/BfPPFQRtH6 — Caley Graphics (@Caley_graphics) April 9, 2019 A number of players deserve special mention. Janby Alderweirtonghen put in the kind of performance we have come to expect from both of them over the past several seasons. Hugo Lloris made a great save to deny Sergio Aguero from the spot. Moussa Sissoko ran around and broke up play in midfield. Even Kieran Trippier put in a pretty stout defensive performance on the right flank, which isn’t easy when you have guys like Raheem Sterling and Riyad Mahrez running straight at you over and over. This wasn’t Pep Guardiola’s finest hour. Of course, another way of telling the story of this fixture is that Pep Guardiola cost City a result. Guardiola clearly set the Citizens up to either draw or squeak by with a 1-0 win to take back to the City of Manchester Stadium. He was forced to play without Bernardo Silva, who was unavailable due to injury. But he also chose to rest Kevin De Bruyne and Leroy Sane. On one level Pep’s initial lineup is a perfectly defensible decision to make, especially considering City are also trying to also win the Premier League. If you feel comfortable enough in your ability to thrash teams at home, there’s a certain logic to rotating some of your squad and aiming for a draw or a narrow win, especially in a pressure cooker environment like at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. However, the decision to wait until the 89th minute to bring KDB and Sane on is much harder to defend. What is so bizarre about this struggle for Guardiola is that he seems to consistently field the wrong team or take the wrong approach in late-stage European fixtures. This stat got passed around a lot on Twitter in the post-game: Pep Guardiola's last win in a CL quarter-final or semi-final away leg was in 2011, when Phil Foden was at junior school. — Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) April 9, 2019 In the past, Guardiola teams got exposed when they committed too many men forward and got hit on the counter—think of Real Madrid’s thrashing of his Bayern Munich side in April of 2014. But in this fixture Pep made the opposite mistake, failing to commit men forward and take advantage of a shaky Spurs team that has no midfield and has fullbacks who can struggle against direct, pacey wingers like Sane and Raheem Sterling. Obviously there is plenty of time for City to atone for this week’s result next week, but at minimum Guardiola’s choices have made next week’s challenge that much more difficult. SONNY!!! ! Son Heung-Min: Most Beloved Player of the Mauricio Pochettino era. It’s not crazy. Though there are many players who could claim that title with some legitimacy, Sonny has maintained his fitness better than any of his fellow members of DESK, he continually scores big goals (dating all the way back to his ludicrous back-heel flick in the league against Watford in his first season in North London), and the sheer joy with which he plays the game is infectious. The goal was especially well-taken too: He timed his run perfectly, somehow managed to keep the ball in, controlled well under some pressure, and then fired an unsaveable shot past Ederson. We should say one more thing about Sonny: If Spurs are going to continue their march in Europe past next week and also continue their quest for top four in the league, they will continue to need big-time performances from their Korean attacker. Harry Kane ’s ankles are a problem. I’ve always thought that Harry would age better than most center forwards. His game is not dependent on pace so he never seemed likely to suffer the fate of a Fernando Torres or Michael Owen. That being said, Kane’s game does depend on balance and body control. His greatest strength as a striker is his knack for finding ways to get high-quality shots off in tight or difficult positions. Bad ankles make doing that harder. Indeed, though he has had a fine second half of the season, he has never looked as lethal as he did in the first 2⁄ 3 of last season’s campaign when he was arguably the best striker in the world. The one silver lining is that Kane may get a nice break now. If he is done for the year, as looks likely, then he will likely only play a few relatively meaningless international fixtures between now and August. Given how much soccer the man has played over the past several years, a break of that length could be very good.<doc-sep>There was a lot of blame to go around after Manchester City’s shock 1-0 defeat at Spurs Tuesday night. It was a disappointing night for Manchester City Football Club on Tuesday night. City entered White Hart Lane riding high. Only once since the start of 2019 had Manchester City failed to win a game across all competitions. They were fresh off the back of two comfortable wins in the league which helped them maintain their slim lead over Liverpool. They had just had a nervy win at Wembley Stadium over the weekend to advance to their third FA Cup Final of the decade. A dream of a quadruple was well within their sights. Their performance on Tuesday night, however, was a major let down. City failed to show the dynamic attacking threat that they had shown for so much of the season. The sure footed Sergio Aguero, who’s been critical to the team’s success so far this season, had a poor penalty shot saved by Spurs Keeper Hugo Lloris early on. City were outplayed in the first half by a Spurs side who looked more confident and comfortable in the game than their opponents. Then, when Manchester City finally seemed to be taking control of things in the second half, disaster struck at the back. Spurs escaped with a 1-0 win, leaving City with a monumental task of having to win by two goals at the Etihad next Wednesday in order to advance to the semi-final. What went wrong for City? Let’s take a look at some of the things that stood out on Tuesday night.<doc-sep>Sign up to FREE email alerts from Football London - Spurs Invalid Email Something went wrong, please try again later. Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Spurs will take a crucial 1-0 lead to the Etihad Stadium next Wednesday when they take on Man City in the second leg of their Champions League tie. The Lilywhites were brilliant against Pep Guardiola's side and earned the win courtesy of Son Heung-min's late strike. All the pressure will be on the reigning Premier League champions next week, with a goal for Spurs in the second leg tie meaning that City would need three goals to progress. Man City actually crashed out of this stage of the competition 12 months ago and Moussa Sissoko has revealed that the team watched videos of Liverpool's two victories over them this time last year. "The gaffer showed us some videos of different teams against them," said the Frenchman (via Manchester Evening News ). "We knew how they can struggle sometimes and that is what we have done. We played well and that is why they did not create so many chances. "They were videos of different teams. Liverpool, Brighton in the FA Cup semi-final on Sunday in their last game. "They conceded some chances and that is what we were looking at. It worked for us, so that is good." (Image: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images) Sissoko was excellent once again in the middle of the park and he has claimed that the team "can be proud" of their performance after securing an important win. "It was a great performance from the team, against one of the best sides in Europe,” added the ex-Newcastle United man. "We did things well and followed our game plan, which was to defend well and not throw ourselves forwards too much. "We played with a lot of intensity, because they don't like it much when you tickle their ankles a bit. "We had a plan and it was to be compact, try to be tight on them and try to be aggressive. We needed to try to help each other and try when we can to play. "That is what we did and they did not have too many chances. For a team like City, that is not normal so we can be proud of our performance. "We have done what the manager wanted us to do and that is why we won the game. Like I said, we have the second leg in a week or something like that so we have to be ready for that." Keep up to date with the latest Tottenham Hotspur news, features and exclusives from football.london via our free WhatsApp service . Text NEWS to 07776197989 and then add the number to your phone contacts book as spurs dot london (case sensitive, with spaces) to receive daily updates and breaking news from Alasdair Gold and the team on Spurs. Your phone number won't be shared with any other members of the group. Click here for more information on the service.<doc-sep>The Champions League quarterfinals got underway Tuesday with a pair of first legs. Tottenham used a goal from Son Heung-min to beat Manchester City in London, while Liverpool blanked Porto 2-0 to put one foot into the semifinals. At Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Spurs looked like the stronger team on the night but lost superstar striker Harry Kane to injury in the second half. The team battled back though, with Son finishing past Ederson with class in the 78th minute. City's Sergio Aguero also had a penalty kick saved by Hugo Lloris. Liverpool did not have trouble with Porto as Roberto Firmino scored and set up Naby Keita for another. The Reds had just three shots on goal but were efficient enough that gives them a little breathing room ahead of next week's trip to Porto. Just one goal in the second leg for the Reds would force Porto to score four. Click the score below for our recaps: Tottenham 1-0 Manchester City Liverpool 2-0 Porto Wednesday's slate Juventus, with Cristiano Ronaldo in the starting lineup, will face Ajax on Wednesday. Manchester United will host Lionel Messi and Barcelona at Old Trafford in the other quarterfinal first leg. Both are set for 3 p.m. ET. All Champions League quarterfinal matches are streaming on fuboTV (Try for free). Relive out live updates. If you are unable to view the live updates below, please click here. Manchester City-Tottenham, Liverpool-Porto updates<doc-sep>
Gundogan: Man City not a big team yet otherwise we'd have taken Tottenham apart The German midfielder rued his side's inability to gain a positive result from their Champions League quarter-final first-leg clash against Spurs Ilkay Gundogan has given a damning assessment of Manchester City's 1-0 Champions League loss to Tottenham, insisting that they cannot be considered a "big team" until they win matches like that. Spurs triumphed in the quarter-final first leg at their new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium as a second-half strike from Heung-Min Son proved enough for the hosts to see off Pep Guardiola's men. It means that City have now lost all five of their European matches against English opposition, with the most recent, prior to Tuesday's defeat to Tottenham, coming in last season's competition against Liverpool. Article continues below Guardiola's side ultimately paid the price for Sergio Aguero's missed penalty early on, with Hugo Lloris saving to his left to keep out the spot-kick that had been awarded by VAR. And Gundogan feels the game could have turned out differently had the Argentine buried the penalty, insisting that City were nervous and that they consistently made the wrong decisions in the game. "We were not brave enough in the game, there were many simple mistakes," he told SportBild. "I have the feeling that we are nervous in important Champions League games. We have always made the wrong decisions. "In such games, we always want to do something special because it means: Champions League semi-finals. Sometimes, less is more. "After the missed penalty came the break. Such negative experiences always throw us back too much. If we put the penalty in, we would have taken Tottenham apart. That’s how we got out of the game. "That must not happen to a big team. That’s why we’re not there yet." City will have the chance to overturn the first-leg deficit when they contest the return meeting on April 17. As for Gundogan, the former Borussia Dortmund midfielder faces an uncertain future at the Etihad Stadium despite having been an integral member of Guardiola's first-team squad this season. The 28-year-old, who has played 42 games in all competitions for City in 2018-19, is out of contract in 2020 but, as revealed by Goal, has put talks over a renewal on hold. Sources close to the Germany international say that he is unconvinced that he will be a regular starter at City beyond the summer and is thus reluctant to commit to a new deal.