Manchester City are the reigning champions of the Premier League. And we beat them. So why don’t they just award us the title now and be done with? Seems fair to me. Avoid all that ‘personal space’ problem that matches bring. 64,000 people screaming their lungs out simultaneously shouldn’t present any problems, should it?

Yesterday was somewhat predictable in that Manchester United won, rather convincingly against Leeds. Then Chelsea won comfortably and Liverpool beat other ‘new kids’, Norwich, in the evening with relative ease.

So that was 3 of the 4 ‘BIG’ teams off to flying starts. And Manchester City were the 4th. Though in reality, the first. As they won it last year.

And they came to Spurs in all their swagger, arrogance and, metaphorically, dripping with gold. As you do when you completely ignore the financial regulations that no-one ever imposes. So on their substitutes bench sat £350million worth of players. And on the pitch strode the swaggeriest, the drippiest, the horriblest of all; new kid Jack Grealish. The nation’s first 100 million pound man. He bought himself a new Alice band to celebrate.

Quite frankly, if I was Sheikh Mansoor I’d have wondered where about 92 million of that money had gone. That’s not to say that Spurs had it easy, oh no. Even if things are easy, or should be easy, Spurs will always find a way to increase the difficulty significantly. So the first 20 minutes were pretty hairy. Scary. And, in Grealish’s case, lairy.

But then Spurs eased themselves back in contention. With a combination of hard work, gritty determination and some truly appalling finishing by City. How they need Harry Kane…

And they need him now! Because all the talk and bullshit and uncertainty kills teams and ruins seasons. We’ve been there, done that and have numerous t-shirts, with ‘Bale’ on the back, with ‘Berbatov’, with ‘Modric’, we have enough.

Spurs became good. Almost dominant. Though not in terms of possession. No-one can out-possess a Pep Guardiola team. They can out-score them though and by a meagre single, solitary but wonderful goal, Spurs did just that. Son, so often the killer of Mancunian dreams, played assassin once more.

It took me 40 minutes to realise Dele Alli was playing. Such was the importance of his contribution. And Lucas Maura was simply magnificent for 90 minutes. Other than that, a brilliant job done. We beat the best. How difficult can the rest of the rabble possibly be?

Very very happy Sunday evening

A xxxx