Tottenham Hotspur 0-1 Manchester City: 5 Talking Points, Premier League 2018-19

#2 Tottenham’s full-backs have a difficult night

Trippier in particular had a difficult night defending against Sterling and Mendy on the left-hand side

It was always going to be a difficult night for Tottenham playing against Manchester City, everybody knew that before kick-off.

But the performance by City’s wingers made it immensely difficult for Spurs’ full-backs to have any impact because both Mahrez and Sterling were so dangerous on the counter-attack.

Just six minutes in Sterling glided past Trippier in the box after the latter failed to head away an Ederson goal kick, cut the ball back to Mahrez and it was 1-0. Even though that was to be the only goal in the game, Sterling and Mahrez were both Manchester City’s stand-out players all game.

Trippier, against his England team-mate, found it extremely difficult to judge what he was going to do every time he got the ball. From the very outset Sterling beat Trippier and he found it particularly easy to make it past him from then on out.

And on the other side, it was a similar story for Mahrez. He pegged Ben Davies back throughout the whole game and forced him to defend for almost the whole 90 minutes. Mahrez was able to run at him, but was also bringing the left-back onto him to create spaces in behind for midfielders Bernardo Silva and David Silva, as it was seen when City nearly made it 2-0 through David Silva.

Both Davies and Trippier are renowned for their crossing and their influence in attack, but tonight they were restricted so much there were hardly any opportunities for them to have any impact in attacking areas.