The e-Spurs Daily Dose 07.10.13

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Tonight's Dose written by Matt Tumminia.

We Got Hammered

As a Tottenham supporter for more than 10 years now, I have seen my fair share of bad match performances. The semi-final losses to Portsmouth and Chelsea, the 5-2 whipping at Old Trafford, either of the 5-2 beatings by Arsenal, a 2 nil loss at West Brom, and the 3-1 loss at Blackpool are among those lowlights that stand out, but yesterday’s performance may take the cake as the worst I have ever seen. No desire, no effort and in the end, no points at home to a team that we should have slaughtered. The minute I saw the team sheet, I wondered why such a team would be picked against a local rival, whose plan was to nullify our attacking prowess and play the counter, when we possess a great deal of depth and could have rotated players much more effectively. So instead of writing a long, detailed review of yesterday’s crap-tastic match, I will be giving brief points about how inept our squad played.

Points

• No more Jermain Defoe. He is an impact sub and cup starter. No hold up play, he looked lost trying to combine with Eriksen and couldn’t even convert chances that he normally puts away. Sorry bud, but back to the bench for you. As it has been mentioned numerous times before by many writers such as myself, he is great for the last 20-30 minutes when defences have tired and he can make a yard or two of space to unleash a piledriver. But as a starter in our first squad? No friggin way.

• Kyle Naughton is not a left back. I have no idea why he is constantly being played out there against Premier League opposition. We have Vertonghen who can play there when Danny Rose isn’t fit or even the young Zeki Fryers, all of whom are left footed. Combine Naughton’s anti-left footedness with Siggy’s lack of wing play and you are left with a whole side of the pitch asking to be bombed upon. Please Andre, don’t let him play on the left. Why we didn’t have Jan on the left with Vlad taking his spot in the center of defence is beyond my comprehension and I am still dealing with this ridiculous decision made by our manager.

• Walker had a match to forget as he was clearly not up for it and was a shadow of his usual self. No pace and constantly being caught out of position, it became apparent that he was not well within the first 30 minutes yet he stayed in when the more logical move could have been to shift Naughton to the right, Jan to the left and bring Vlad into the center with Daws. Reports were saying that he felt sick but to me it looked like he was nursing some kind of leg or groin injury as he was constantly grimacing throughout the match.

• Daws and Jan played like they have never seen each other before in their lives, let alone play together for over 30 matches. Both were all over the place, bad positioning, lazy tracking and being beat numerous times by average players. It’s a shame that Lloris had to deal with these two giving their best Titus Bramble impressions.

• Dembele should not have even shown up because he would have contributed the same amount to the team, which was a big fat nothing. Looking tired and disinterested, he made no real runs into the opposition half and went missing for almost the entirety of the match, which is not all his fault as he played 90 minutes in Russia on Thursday and was then was asked to play a physical club on Sunday. Running him into the ground didn’t work last year so why are we doing it again this term? Did we not learn from our past mistakes? Based upon what happened yesterday, it seems like we have not. Getting back to his performance, it was crap and while I am sure he will get back to his usual dominating self after the international break, it was concerning to view.

• Paulinho and Andros Townsend were the best Spurs players on the pitch, if there were any decent performances from our XI, and I would only give them 5.5’s as both spurned chance after chance. Paulinho made some good runs and got the ball in good positions but his shooting or final ball was always lacking. The same can be said about young Andros, dangerous at times yet disappeared when needed and although sending in a few good balls, the diminutive figure of Defoe could not find any space to latch onto such crosses.

• Eriksen was a complete non-factor as West Ham set up 4 central midfielders around the Dane to nullify his influence and not allow him any time or space on the ball. Kudos to them for handcuffing the playmaker but he should have still been able to find some space out wide to pick some passes. If he was able to take up the left side when Siggy was cutting in, I am sure we would have not gone down without so much as a whimper. Also, when Defoe is playing, Holtby needs to be playing as they both understand each other’s movements and link up well, similarly to when Eriksen plays with Soldado.

• Siggy didn’t do much of anything except come inside and play right into West Ham’s tactics. I have written before that he can play the wing game but when two right footers are played on the left side, regardless of how talented they may or may not be, nothing good can come from a situation like this. He needs to recognise the defensive system and how to counteract such midfield nullification, which in yesterday’s case would have been to stick to that byline and stretch the backline.

• AVB got completely and utterly out-coached by a big fat prick, a guy who was once fired from the Blackburn job, a guy whose idea of tactics are to lump it up to a tall bean pole and get on the end of knockdowns, and yet, he devised a plan which made our squad look like a League 2 club. The lack of a reaction from AVB at halftime was worrying as it was plain to see from anyone who was watching the match that things needed to be changed.

Call Me Maybe

Maybe if we would have started with Soldado, things might have been different as he does link up the midfield and our attackers effectively. Maybe seeing how the two Kyle’s were uncomfortable, he could have switched the backline around or gone with a 3-5-1-1, Naughton and Townsend being the wingbacks and Sandro coming in to allow Paulinho and Dembele to push up the pitch. Maybe Chadli could have been inserted at halftime to give the team more natural width in the final third. Whatever AVB was thinking, it was wrong and now I am stuck with the lasting image of a fat ugly prick with a rapist smile beaming as if his club won the Champions League final in our house. Just let that set in for a minute and then reach for the Pepto Bismal because if that doesn’t make you sick, nothing short of seeing Rebel Wilson naked will.

I Love Scotch

And that concludes my diatribe about what went wrong during the match, which in a nutshell, was everything. A bad day at the office, one compounded by racist chants from the visitors section while our fans were harassed by police, made for a long trek home after work, followed shortly by 4 fingers of scotch with no chaser, leading to a spot of euphoria and drunkenness before the eventual crash and burn on the couch. Let’s hope I will have to wait another 10 years to see such a performance again or I may just have to take a soldering iron to my eyes to make sure I cannot witness such ineptitude.

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