Tottenham Hotspur booked their FA Cup quarter-final spot as they ran out comfortable winners on a difficult night at Wembley.
On a night where many people wanted to talk about the snowy conditions and the incompetency of the VAR, Spurs fans took to Twitter to laud their January signing Lucas Moura after he put in a brilliant performance to help Mauricio Pochettino’s side see off Rochdale in the fifth round of the FA Cup.
Pochettino played a strong-looking side for the replay against the League One strugglers, and it seemed to pay off early on when Erik Lamela opened the scoring. However, referee Paul Tierney produced the stance that was set to be one of the defining images of the night as he went to his earpiece before being willing to confirm that the goal had stood.
Incredibly, Fernando Llorente was adjudged to have committed a foul in the build-up – if anything, the foul was on Llorente – and the goal was disallowed. Unfortunately, for those supporters of VAR, it seemed to be a bad night for those using the technology.
One person it was not a bad night for however, was Lucas. The 25-year-old was making only his fourth appearance for Spurs following his £25 million January move, and only his second start, but he showed why Spurs fans can afford to be extremely excited about his arrival.
Lucas looked a threat all evening. His movement was clever, his passing was deadly accurate and his skill was arguably so good that he still managed to garner a huge amount of praise despite the fact that many would have expected Spurs to dispatch the opposition comfortably anyway.
The Brazilian bagged two assists on the night. His first came from a perfectly-weighted through ball which gave Llorente the chance to dink the ball over the goalkeeper to give Spurs a 2-1 lead early on in the second-half.
And then just six minutes later, he timed his run to perfection to get on the end of a through ball, before sliding it across the six-yard box for Llorente to score the second of his three goals.
Spurs’ critics will point to their opponents as a reason to downplay Lucas’ performance, but it is difficult to imagine that many teams in the top flight will be able to deal with the January signing if it was a sign of things to come.
Here is the best of the reaction to Lucas’ performance…
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