Few fans would’ve been disappointed with Tottenham Hotspur’s start to the 2021/22 Premier League campaign, but following defeat to Crystal Palace and that veritable ‘no show’ – it sadly wasn’t a one off looking at the overall performance against Rennes in midweek, albeit we took a point for our efforts.
The more optimistic in the fanbase will take the positives from the performance, particularly with a number of changes made again, but the more pessimistic will continue to have worries given how quickly the wheels have fallen off and we’ve become so open at the back.
This is hardly the perfect time to face high flying Chelsea, even with White Hart Lane advantage, as despite sitting only a point behind them in the early table, a repeat of the last two performances could see a very humbling scoreline on Sunday evening.
It doesn’t get easier when you consider Nuno Espirito Santo is without Japhet Tanganga (suspension), Giovani Lo Celso, Cristian Romero and Davinson Sanchez (still quarantine) and there are continuing doubts about Son Heung-Min and Eric Dier. That’s before we factor in the severity of injury suffered by Lucas Moura and Steven Bergwijn in the last game.
Let’s see what Nuno does…To Dare Is To Do after all.
Same old story really, not creating enough chances, better overall performance though and good enough to beat the gooners with a bit of luck. Still embarrassing being beaten 3-0 at home.
Humiliated one of the easiest 3 points Chelsea will get this season.
Sadly Santo time is up. Simply not good enough.
I preferred the first half.
Really trying to look for positives, the only thing I can come up with is the massively disruptive last 2 weeks with injuries etc. That had to have played a part. Hopefully with a full week with all the players fit and present will make a difference. Lose next week to an underperforming Arsenal and my opinion will be far more critical…
Chelsea have a manager who is world class. He saw what went wrong in the first half and rectified it with a change of formation and a sub. Nuno didn’t counteract that in anyway and stuck with a 4-3-3 formation. I have doubts that system will get the best out of Kane and Son.
Spot on !
We are light years behind the top teams. No chance of top 6 this season. Here we go again.
That’s why it is worth taking the Europa conference seriously, we have no chance of top 6 going by what we are seeing so far so might as well try and win something we do have half a chance in.
This shows and proves, the 1st 3 games was luck. The dust has settled and honeymoon period is over. We look totally clueless in the final 3rd, we created nothing and no sustain of pressure and we were the home team.
Their defenders had the day off so went up field and scored some goals to relieve the boredom.
Well what can one say . Competed 1st half but 2nd half collapsed and as usual were out thought by a top quality coach .
However Tuchel had excellent players with which to work . Who did we have ?
A cart horse ( worse than Doherty ) for a full back , a non effectual young midfielder who were both bought to improve the team
I would argue that the Summer signings ( perhaps not centre back ) have taken the team backwards .
Who did Nuno have to bring on as subs ? What a shambles .
The transfer situation in the last few windows has been pathetic Levy is looking for cheap options to compete with teams who are prepared to buy good quality players
£ 40,000 for Winks ?? How can a person keep a job when they have overseen the demise of a once respected club
OK it wasn’t half a team we put out against the Euro Champions but it was certainly a half baked team what with players coming back from injuries, a self imposed lay off by one of them, quarantines from South America and Croatia. Also bear in mind that Chelsea (favourites for the title this year)had an extra day to recover from their Euro exertions. In the circumstances we put up a good show in the first half closing Chelsea down and taking the game to them. Inevitably that high energy performance took its toll in the second half with that lucky deflection finishing us off. But of course that’s what most posters here (apart from Andre) do not want to hear. They would rather make themselves feel better by putting the boot into the lads and the manager. Not what I call being a supporter!
Stan
While I accept your argument I think however that most on here expressed a positive opinion on the team selection .
No one ought to criticise the team or manager as the club decides who will be bought or sold and employ a manager who has to work with players who are loanees or bought on the cheap and frankly he is considered a so so manager .
So where do we go from here ?
I also liked this team selection but was wary of the special factors I mentioned that would affect their performance. The difference is that I don’t regard this result as a disaster as others seem to do for the reasons I have given If we carry on losing after these special factors no longer apply that will be the time to start worrying.
So Stan, are you saying that as supporters we aren’t allowed to be critical of a poor performance that resulted in a 3-0 home defeat?
You can be critical of course but as supporters you can also make reasonable allowances for their performance as I have done against what after all is one of the best teams in Europe, if not the world.. My gripe is that you guys never do. And 3-O included that very fortunate deflection that knocked the stuffing out of us and that last minute goal. Much as going down to Palace by the same score resulted from the sending off and a couple of goals being scored in the last few minutes
You can be critical of course but as supporters you can also make reasonable allowances for their performance as I have done against what after all is one of the best teams in Europe, if not the world.. My gripe is that you guys never do. And 3-O included that very fortunate deflection that knocked the stuffing out of us and that last minute goal. Much as going down to Palace by the same score resulted from the sending off and a couple of goals being scored in the last few minutes
Stan….I think you pick on 1 or 2 over the top posts and then make generalised comments as if it applies to all on here, stop being an apologist for the players who aren’t performing. It’s not long ago you were defending Jose, now you are defending the players who were letting him down. Make your mind up.
So if Chelsea lost, their excuse would be that had to travel as it was an away game,
That’s a ridiculous comparison if I may say so which bears no relation to the particular allowances I have made for how we performed.
I thought we did OK first half, the 11 on the pitch were pretty good, 2nd half their changes were simply better than ours, they were the better team creating more chances, and eventually scoring goals.
We do need a better squad, we have a couple of “not quite” players at our team.
HK needs to move up front but he did put a shift in today, the need for a creative midfielder is clearly evident.
Not sure on Emerson, he looks, energetic enough, but I do think the likes of Tomyishu (spelling) who is now at Arse, would’ve been a better purchase.
It’s the first real game back after all the international mess, Let’s give it a while yet, I do feel that, that 11 against Arsenal will do OK.
Whilst I thought there was some improvement in Kanes performance, it ain’t just HT, TK and, I saying it.
https://youtu.be/twkdzuya-bw
Like most on here I was happier with the team selection compared to last week. But I find it difficult to accept that you can win EPL games, especially against a team like Chelsea and even with injuries to a couple of our forwards, with 4 mid-fielders and only 2 accepted forwards (Son and Kane) and one of those (Kane) playing deep.
Well my pre-match optimism lasted to half time at least… But it went all downhill from there on.
I can partially accept Stan’s take on it all. There were definitely many reasons for us not performing well for the full 90 minutes. But, that’s not really acceptable in itself. to me. Because so much of it was self-inflicted.
The 3 just coming back from quarantine. Harry’s pre season nonsense and getting back to training a couple of weeks late etc. New guys not having the needed fitness levels. Likewise with Ndombele and Lo Celso. (Have they ever been capable of lasting the full 90? No!) There’s more, but I can’t be making lists of excuses right now… That just makes it seem even worse than it was…
We did well to take them by surprise (tactically) in the first half. But Tuchel had the perfect answers on his bench. When Spurs so obviously had shot their load, from working hard in the first 45. And then we had no real answers ourselves to counter Tuchel’s changes in the second 45.
I am however encouraged by what I saw in the first half. The season is long and we will have much better weeks than this past one. We can compete. We can beat the best. But we need to get it together again and find some consistency, pretty soon. We can’t dwell on what Stan has pointed to and make such excuses every time we lose. We are better than that. Aren’t we? I think so…
Yeah, it was a very good Chelsea team that we lost to. But that doesn’t explain the same scoreline versus Palace a week earlier…
Beat the Gooners and we’ll all be cheering again. I suspect that we can, and believe that we will…
Just to say I don’t make excuses every time we lose (I have been pretty tough on team selections in the past and on certain players). I only make excuses where I think they are justified for one reason or another.. This game was definitely one such occasion.
I get the impression that even if we were down to half a team in a game due to injury some of you guys would be having a go at them for getting injured and losing.
Stan, I didn’t say that you make excuses every time we lose. I used the word “we”. I just mean’t it as a generalisation.
Like I said, I kind of agree with you…
Our first half play would probably be good enough to beat the Gooners but only if we can convert it into goals. We have scored just one from open play in 5 PL games, we have to find a way of creating more chances and taking them. Without goals we will win nothing.
There were some interesting comments from pundits after the game yesterday, all very critical of Kane and whether he is being asked to play deeper or if he just does it because nobody is creating anything for him when he is up front. He had just 5 touches in or around the box yesterday compared to Lukaku’s 15, and he had a poor game by his own standards!
There was one move that summed it up for me, Kane passed forward to Son who played in Reguilon on the overlap whose cross failed to reach our two unmarked players running in on the back post. Where was our main striker? He hadn’t even made it to the opposition box and didn’t even look to have tried. We have to get him back to where he is in a position to score, we also have to find someone to create chances for him from midfield instead of him having to play both roles.
Firstly may I say Rip to Greavsie, our greatest ever goal scorer, and a key member of a great Spurs team that followed on from the doubler winners. This was during the era when our beloved Spurs team had ambition to become a top top side. I was privileged to witness many of the games during this period. Compare those days when we made game changing signings like Greaves and later, Linekar both tlreturning from top European teams, WC winners like Ardilas and Villa from Argentina, top players like Gazza and others and were up there competing for the best, whereas we have gone from signing the organ grinders, to signing the monkey sitting on top of the organ. If the last 2 PL results and the draw scraped the Europa League division 2 competition, are anything to go by then this season we may be closer to the middle or bottom of the PL rather than the top 4 or 6. Never mind after all we have built Levy’s emporium at a cost of close to 1 billion rather than concentrate on the on pitch performance of the team. One thing that is undeniable is that the ENIC era has seen us slide into mediocraty while others have continually progressed.