Fernando Llorente may have fired Premier League giants Spurs into the quarter-finals of the FA Cup with a hat-trick but he wasn’t the game’s best player.
Fernando Llorente scored a perfect hat-trick inside 12 minutes as Tottenham Hotspur thrashed Rochdale 6-1 in the FA Cup fifth round replay on a snow-covered Wembley on Wednesday night.
But that does not mean the Spanish striker was the best player on the park against Keith Hill’s League One opposition. Far from it.
Llorente, apart from those goal-laden minutes directly after half-time, was very quiet throughout and it seemed that BT Sport pundit Robbie Savage was completely missing the point of the Man of the Match award when he handed it to the former Swansea City man.
Surely the prize has to go to the player who made the most impressive and substantial contribution across the entire game? By this logic, Son Heung-Min, Erik Lamela and Lucas Moura in particular were far more deserving.
Son was at his efficient best at Wembley, firing in the opener, tapping home the fifth and producing a sublime cross to seal Llorente’s quickfire treble.
Lamela, meanwhile, was a bundle of energy and creativity throughout and Lucas, in only his fourth Spurs appearance, showed why they paid PSG £23 million last month – albeit against a side in danger of dropping into League Two.
It was Lucas who set up Llorente’s first two goals with razor-sharp passes and was a constant threat throughout, and many Spurs fans believed he deserved more credit for his efforts.
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