IF THIS IS WHAT JERMAIN DEFOE CAN do when he needs a rest, then defenders will shudder to think what he would be capable of when he has had a bit of a breather. Jacques Santini, the Tottenham Hotspur manager, suggested on Friday that he might bench the England forward for Saturday’s match in the wake of his recent hectic schedule, but his decision to play him anyway could rebound. A goal of stunning quality in front of Sven-Göran Eriksson, the England head coach, guaranteed Defoe’s selection for the World Cup qualifying matches against Austria and Poland rather than two weeks’ downtime.
Will he start? If the choice is between Defoe and Emile Heskey alongside Michael Owen, then on this evidence there is no contest. Heskey missed two good chances as Birmingham dominated the later stages of the game, and his luck was out when a headed flick was cleared from the goalline. Defoe, in contrast, conjured a spectacular goal out of nothing at all. Perhaps as bored with a dull opening 34 minutes as everyone else inside White Hart Lane, Defoe fastened onto the ball some 35 yards out, twisted inside Matthew Upson and Muzzy Izzet, then back across Kenny Cunningham before hitting a venomous shot that might have beaten Maik Taylor, even without the help of a deflection off Upson as he tried to recover.
Defoe is single-minded when he gets a sight of goal, which made it all the more surprising that he was judged guilty of a dive (and shown a yellow card) at the end of another slalom through City’s ranks. Upson had a close-up view of Defoe at work — although not quite close enough — and liked what he saw. “He’s got such a low centre of gravity,” Upson said. “He’s very light, but he’s very strong with it, and he’s got an amazingly good change of direction and body movement which, for a big defender, is very difficult to cope with. That is what makes him so dangerous in and around the box. Along with that he’s got an excellent first touch, a lot of awareness and he’s an excellent finisher. He’s in the England squad by right. He’s looked very sharp this season. He ‘s definitely up there in the top four or five strikers.”
Upson also tried to make a positive case for Heskey, but the only similarity between the Birmingham forward’s day and that of Defoe was that he was also booked for an alleged dive, when Paul Robinson challenged him in the penalty area. “(Goalscoring) has been our Achilles’ heel since we’ve been in the Premier League,” Steve Bruce, the Birmingham manager, said. “But it ‘s not just the strikers. The whole team has got to improve and they’ve all got to chip in. I think that’s 11 games now when we’ve only scored one or no goals and that can’t keep happening. For me, we didn’t deserve to lose, but hard luck stories are no good, pats on the back, saying ‘Birmingham have done well again’, when we haven’t got the result.
Hopefully we will get better — but we must improve in that area of the pitch to progress.”
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Santini plans to use the international break to take stock of his team’s performances so far, but initial impressions are positive. His reshaped team have a much more solid look than the line-ups of recent seasons — what, no Mauricio Taricco? — and only once since the formation of the Premier League have they bettered this season’s four-game unbeaten start. Add on two matches without defeat at the end of last season and they are only 38 behind Arsenal.