{"id":574005,"date":"2020-12-06T14:55:52","date_gmt":"2020-12-06T19:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=574005"},"modified":"2026-01-30T16:37:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T21:37:30","slug":"jose-mourinho-masterclass-takes-tottenham-hotspur-top-of-the-premier-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2020\/12\/06\/jose-mourinho-masterclass-takes-tottenham-hotspur-top-of-the-premier-league\/","title":{"rendered":"Jose Mourinho Masterclass Takes Tottenham Hotspur Top of the Premier League"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2020\/12\/06\/tottenham-hotspur-and-arsenal-battle-for-bragging-rights-in-north-london-derby\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">North London Derby<\/a> of the season saw another Jose Mourinho masterclass take <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?s=Tottenham\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Tottenham Hotspur<\/a>\u00a0to the top of the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?s=Premier+league\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Premier League.<\/a><\/p>\n<h2>Jose Mourinho Masterclass Lifts Tottenham Hotspur Top of the Table<\/h2>\n<h3>The Jose Way<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?s=Arsenal\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Arsenal<\/a> had 69% of the possession, yet struggled to make any impact on the game. They had 11 shots to Spurs&#8217; six yet it was the home side who came out on top. This was a Jose Mourinho masterclass in tactics. It was not free-flowing football, it was not exciting at times, but it worked. To win titles, you have to win games no matter what it takes. Mourinho has his players buying into his methodology.<\/p>\n<h3>Son Heung-min and Harry Kane On Song Again<\/h3>\n<p>The privileged 2,000 Tottenham fans who were able to attend their first game for nine months would have been delighted to see the <a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/21a66f6a\/Harry-Kane\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Harry Kane<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/92e7e919\/Son-Heung-min\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Son Heung-min<\/a> show continue once more.<\/p>\n<p>Arsenal were on the attack before <a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/5c2b4f07\/Serge-Aurier\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Serge Aurier <\/a>got the ball to Kane, who had come deep as he has so many times this season. His pass to Son was perfect but what the South Korean did next was sublime. He ran forward, cut inside and bent the ball beyond <a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/2628fd2b\/Bernd-Leno\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bernd Leno.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Right on half-time, Spurs counter-attacked once more. <a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/d7553721\/Giovani-Lo-Celso\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Giovani Lo Celso<\/a> played into Son who in turn laid it off for Kane. The front man took one touch before crashing the ball in off the underside of the crossbar, leaving Leno with no chance.<\/p>\n<h3>Tottenham Will Be Hard to Beat<\/h3>\n<p>They&#8217;ve already proved it this season, but it&#8217;s worth reiterating that Tottenham are going to be a difficult team to beat this season. Being strong defensively is fine but when you have players like Son and Kane up front, you will be tough to get points against.<\/p>\n<p>Victories against <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/clubs\/manchester-united\/\" target=\"_self\">Manchester United<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/clubs\/manchester-city\/\" target=\"_self\">Manchester City<\/a> and now Arsenal show that this Spurs team are ready to fight to succeed. Jose Mourinho has a team playing his way. Whether fans like it or not is a different issue &#8211; winning games wins titles.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"ZVRhVVPwSSJ1PWqG_9iMlg\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.co.uk\/detail\/1289755937\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'ZVRhVVPwSSJ1PWqG_9iMlg',sig:'AcUYZjko9XejXp924akVQC_CqKLfcxcQxYRqxyER9M0=',w:'594px',h:'452px',items:'1289755937',caption: true ,tld:'co.uk',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first North London Derby of the season saw another Jose Mourinho masterclass take Tottenham Hotspur\u00a0to the top of the Premier League. Jose Mourinho Masterclass Lifts Tottenham Hotspur Top of the Table The Jose Way Arsenal had 69% of the possession, yet struggled to make any impact on the game. They had 11 shots to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2488,"featured_media":574016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,2,3],"tags":[32739,32738,264,138,487,40,1914,136],"class_list":["post-574005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tottenham","category-featured","category-premier-league","tag-arsenal","tag-arsenal-fixtures","tag-harry-kane","tag-jose-mourinho","tag-north-london-derby","tag-premier-league","tag-son-heung-min","tag-world-football"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2488"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574005"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":664299,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574005\/revisions\/664299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}