Harry Kane could very fell have scored his final goal for the Lilywhites at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in the defeat to Brentford. The 29-year-old striker, who sees his contract expire at the end of next season, opened the scoring with a spectacular effort from range before the Bees piled on the misery.
Bryan Mbeumo equalised for Thomas Frank’s side just moments into the second-half before doubling his tally a couple of minutes later. Then, in the dying embers of the tie, Yoane Wissa extended Brentford’s lead to two-goals – and Spurs supporters were far from pleased.
Upon the final whistle, large groups of fans had already left despite a pre-planned lap of honour by the players. So, with that being said, football.london has taken a look at how the national media reacted to north Londoners’ defeat.
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The Express
“If Antonio Conte was watching Tottenham’s final home game of the season then he was probably the least surprised at how the match turned out than any other long-suffering Spurs supporter,” wrote Stuart Ballard. “It’s little over two months since Conte lost his cool in a now infamous press conference after watching Tottenham blow a 3-1 lead against Southampton.
“A week later and it was announced Conte and Tottenham were parting ways and they’ve won just two league games ever since. The Italian drew some heavy criticism for how scathing he was in his final press conference.
“Conte called out the players for being selfish, not doing enough to make the fans proud and accused them of being used to not fighting for any silverware for too long. And it’s hard to argue against any of Conte’s savage remarks following the club’s humiliating final home match of the season.”
The Telegraph
“Fair play to whoever found enough highlights to put together an end-of-season montage for the Tottenham Hotspur supporters who bothered to hang around for the players’ walk of shame, even if a few of those fans booed at the end of it,” wrote Matt Law.
“Unsurprisingly, Harry Kane featured in most of the clips and, even more unsurprisingly, the striker was presented with all three of Tottenham’s player-of-the-season awards following the club’s final home game of the campaign.
“For Kane, this has been one of his best-ever seasons. He has broken the Tottenham and England goalscoring records and could still beat his best-ever Premier League tally of 30 after moving on to 28 top-flight goals.
“Kane’s goal against Brentford clinched another League record as he has now netted in 25 different games this season, which also underlines just how bad the rest of the Tottenham team have been. Collectively, this has been a nightmare season for Spurs and those who stayed for the ‘lap of appreciation’ that turned into a walk of shame will recognise that Kane deserves better – certainly much more than a mural – however good it is.”
BBC
“With very little to play for, most of the focus pre-match was on Kane and his Tottenham future as fans visited the newly-painted mural of their record goalscorer across the road from the stadium,” wrote Emma Sanders. “It was his 300th start in the Premier League for Tottenham but how many more will be added to that tally remains unknown.
“He was a bright spark in the early stages alongside Son Heung-min, who himself had several chances to score in the first half. Brentford’s Rico Henry made a crucial goalline clearance to deny Emerson Royal and Arnaut Danjuma flicked a diving header inches wide from Son’s cross.
“Bar a few half-chances and a dangerous cut-back from Kevin Schade, Brentford did little to trouble goalkeeper Forster until the second half. But they started on the front foot after the break, getting in behind Spurs’ defence and feeding Mbeumo, who took both of his goals extremely well.”
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