Tottenham Hotspur journalist Alasdair Gold has been sharing his praise for Lilywhites full-back Matt Doherty and his latest performance for the north London club in their recent 4-1 win over Crystal Palace in the Premier League.
This comes after Gold recently uploaded a video onto his YouTube channel where he spoke about a range of topics concerning Jose Mourinho’s side.
On the subject of Doherty, who played the entire game against Roy Hodgson’s Eagles, Gold had this to say about the defender.
He said: “I just feel sorry for him. I think there are people still saying how rubbish he was, but I actually thought defensively, I thought he had a good game.
“I still don’t believe [Palace’s] goal was his fault and he’s played his part in recent games in the defence tightening up.
“Yes, he’s still got a lot of work to do going forward. He got an assist – albeit a very simple kind of tap into [Harry] Kane to have that wonderful shot at goal, [he] could have done better with his crossing, certainly, but I feel that the first step for him was tightening up the defence and Mourinho was really happy with him.”
Spurs signed Doherty back in the previous summer transfer window from fellow Premier League side Wolves for a fee of £15.12 million.
Since arriving at the club, the 29-year-old, who is currently valued at £18 million, has made 26 appearances for Spurs across all competitions in which he has managed to grab four assists in the process (per Transfermarkt).
TIF Thoughts on Alasdair Gold’s Doherty comments and his performance against Palace…
As Gold mentioned in his video, Spurs boss Mourinho labelled Doherty’s defensive display against the Eagles as “impeccable”.
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In terms of Gold’s comments on Doherty’s defensive efforts in the game against Palace, the fact that only Sergio Reguilon made more interceptions (5) in the game than the Irishman did (4), compared to his performance in Spurs’ previous league game against Fulham, where Doherty failed to make even one interception (as per WhoScored), shows that he has improved with his defensive play.
Moving forward, if Doherty can continue at this level of performance that he put in against Palace throughout the remainder of the season, he will surely be in with a strong shout of being viewed as Spurs’ first-choice right-back.