Spurs take third straight loss as offsides deny Son a hat trick

Football

Published: 27 Nov. 2023, 11:25 Updated: 27 Nov. 2023, 17:16

Spurs take third straight loss as offsides deny Son a hat trick

Tottenham Hotspur's Son Heung-min, left, is with referee Robert Jones after scoring a goal that was later disallowed in the match against Aston Villa in London on Sunday. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

Tottenham took their third straight loss on Sunday, losing 2-1 to Aston Villa on home turf after giving up an early lead — again.

Spurs now sit in fifth place on the Premier League standings while Villa slid into fourth.

It was deja vu for Spurs, who earlier this month ended their 10-game undefeated run in a 4-1 loss to Chelsea after opening scoring in the sixth minute and dropped their next game 2-1 to Wolverhampton despite earning the first point even earlier, three minutes into the game.

On Sunday, Spurs midfielder Giovani Lo Celso opened the scoring in the 22nd minute at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in north London.

But the home team’s score would stay there for the rest of the match despite creating numerous chances on the pitch. A chain of offside calls against the north London side denied captain Son Heung-min a would-be hat trick, as all three balls he put into the net on Sunday got flags instead of points on the scoreboard.

It was also a game with plenty of VAR as play stopped to check close calls — a common feature of Villa fixtures under manager Unai Emery, whose term has seen Villa catch its opponents offside the most out of any team in the Premier League, reported The Athletic.

“These kinds of things, I think, stops our way we’re playing. I think as a player I think we want a game [to be] fluid,” Son said in a post-match interview. “Obviously it’s also our fault. Obviously we shouldn’t have a situation like that because we should have control… Today was, again, a good lesson.”

Villa got the equalizer with a header by Pau Torres during stoppage time before the end of the first half, and then took the lead shortly after with a goal by Ollie Watkins from the center of the pitch in minute 61.

All three of Spurs’ losses came despite early leads in each of the matches, which have also seen a boatload of injuries and absences, forcing changes to manager Ange Postecoglou’s lineup.

Spurs midfielder Rodrigo Bentancur, who was back in the game after recovering from a knee injury, took a blow during the first half on Sunday and made an early exit.

Still, Postecoglou said he was pleased with his team’s performance despite the loss.

“To be honest, with the kind of injury list we got at the time, we can only really look at a game at a time, only a day at a time because, like I said, we’ve got 10 out at the moment out of a senior list,” Postecoglou said after the match. “All these kinds of things are challenges, but, as I said, if the lads keep showing the same intent they did today, we’ll get through this period and we’ll come out a stronger team.”

BY MARY YANG [mary.yang@joongang.co.kr]