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Spurs news, rants

Spurs’ January Transfer Window: Six Tottenham Talking Points

1. Dele

AANP has traditionally been one to greet bad news with a stiffening of the upper lip and, if pushed, a solemn, unspoken nod at a nearby chum who feels similarly. And rarely has the upper lip been stiffer in recent times than upon learning of the departure of young Dele.

Utterly inevitable of course. The young bean had long ago fizzled out, and generally only popped up in lilywhite in recent years to drift along in his own little world before another month or two on the bench. If any other wag did what he’s been doing – slowing down the game, hogging the ball, moodily waving the arms and giving up the cause when dispossessed – the knives would have been out and pitchforks flung in his direction a long time ago.

By the time the bitter end swung around Dele offered purely decorative value. We’d spot him pre-match, forlornly nutmegging his fellow subs during the warm-up, but thereafter his biggest contribution tended to be in unwrapping a blanket for his legs as he watched on from the bench. If ever a former bright young thing needed a change of scenery, it is Dele. One does not disagree with the unceremonious binning.

Quite why it all went wrong is a rummy one. Dele’s problem seemed ultimately to be an existential one, in that his favoured No. 10 position simply ceased to exist. Disappeared into the ether. This must have been pretty tough for the chap to take, essentially turning up to work to find that his desk had been removed, but I suppose time – and systems involving one central striker and two inverted wingers – wait for no man.

Within Conte’s 3-4-3, there is no room for a midfielder who yearns deep inside to be a forward. Conte’s midfielders must midfield first, and ghost into the opposition area only on special occasions.

(Admittedly the 3-5-2 set-up, which brought something like the best out of Dele vs Liverpool a few weeks back, suggested that there might be life in the old dog yet, and I confess to being a mite surprised that this experiment was not repeated, but Conte presumably had seen enough.)

So off he has popped – and yet it does lower the mood about the place, what? Peak Dele was, if not necessarily the heartbeat, then certainly one of the essential organs of the whole glorious-without-actually-bringing-home-any-specific-glory Poch era.

This is not so much for what he did (although the list is plentiful and glorious: popping up as young scamps will do, with goals against Real, and Arse, and Chelsea; demonstrating some quite glorious touches to pluck falling footballs from the sky; grinning cheekily while kicking out slyly; contorting thumb and forefinger; and so on).

It’s as much for what the very presence of the chap said about our last fun adventure: Poch-era Tottenham. Here was a brash young bounder who oozed talent and positively revelled in flicking the ears of shinier opponents. Think of him in his bursting-from-midfield pomp, and it’s hard not to think of that all-singing, all-dancing team of nearly-men who had an absolute blast and took us to within a whisker of pots of various sizes.

And by a similar token, removing Dele in effect dismantles more of that Poch machinery, leaving behind just the top and tail of the thing.

“Here’s Dele Alli… here’s Lucas Moura… OH THEY’VE DONE IT!

2. Ndombele and Lo Celso

Tottenham Hotspur is, of course, where talented foreign footballers go to die, so we probably should not be too surprised that having looked like the sort of beans around whom Title-challenging teams could be built in their YouTube compilations and international performances, Ndombele and Lo Celso are now being bundled out of the nearest exit.

Dashed shame though. One didn’t need to boast the keenest football eye to detect that each of the aforementioned were capable of some pretty ripping stuff with a ball at their feet – and I rather fancy that they’ll do more of the same in sunnier climes in the months and years to come, when bedecked in anything but lilywhite.

And yet, present them with the lush greenery of N17 and the pair of them struggled to remember what game they were playing.

Actually, I do Ndombele a disservice there. The chap’s great flaw was not his touch, or delivery, or any such thing. The main challenge Ndombele seemed to encounter any time he finished tying his laces was that after one quick trot around the pitch he seemed to need a full week to recover, gasping for air, his lungs aflame and legs as jelly.

If inclined one could probably write a long-ish essay on what went wrong and what might have been a bit right-er about Ndombele’s time at Spurs. There were moments when he would receive the ball in the narrowest of corners, boxed in by a variety of opposing limbs, and still mesmerically emerge from said dead-end with ball at feet and opponents dizzied. Sometimes he would even throw in end-product too, a delightfully-weighted pass or a shot from the edge of the area.

Ultimately, however, neither he nor Lo Celso seemed remotely cut out for a life in the heart of the Tottenham midfield. Lo Celso in particular seemed to make a habit, in recent months, of doing small things with great error, be it a simple pass to tick along the midfield or a corner to beat the first man.

Perhaps if any of the umpteen managers who oversaw them had seen fit to take either of these two souls, stick them slap-bang in the heart of things and construct a team around them, their talents might have blazed forth and all would have been right with the world.

But it is telling that none of those managers did. Sometimes no words need uttering, and these appears to be those times. A knowing nod, and tap of the nose speaks volumes. “Ndombele and Lo Celso”, one manager after another seems to have been saying, without actually saying, “not the sort of eggs upon whom one can rely.” And if an egg can’t be relied upon in midfield, there’s not much left for them other than the scraps of substitute appearances and an occasional Europa start.

3. Bryan Gil

There are loans and then there are loans, and while Ndombele and Lo Celso’s loans seem to carry with them a rather unsubtle message that if they want to stick around in their new homes then it’s fine by all back at HQ, the loan of Bryan Gil has more of the bona fide have-him-for-a-bit-but-then-return-him about it.

The view at AANP Towers is pretty unimpressed about this one, from start to finish. One probably should let bygones be bygones and whatnot, but I still chafe a bit at the thought that we traded in one perfectly serviceable Lamela – plus £20m, dash it – for this Gil character.

Not Gil’s fault of course, he can do little more than turn up where told, at the appointed hour and with hair combed just so. But the logic behind the whole trade-off to this day has me scratching the old loaf. I should probably revisit the whole script in a few years’ time, when Gil has discovered the joys of steak lunches and bench presses, but for now he is a boy in a man’s world if ever there were one.

The loan at least means he can get his size fives in contact with a ball again, so silver linings and all that. More terrifyingly, in conjunction with the paperwork on Dele, Ndombele and Lo Celso, it leaves the creative cupboard pretty bare – but this is presumably a contingency for which Our Glorious Leader has planned.

4. Bentancur and Kulusevski

As ever, if you want a detailed analysis of these fellows’ strengths, weaknesses, preferences and whatnot then you are in a laughably bad spot of the interweb, but do stick around anyway.

AANP can be pretty sharp at times, and having seen Conte get rid of three creative central midfield types, and summon Bentancur – yet another of those fellows whose idea of a good time is rolling up their sleeves, scrapping for the ball and then shoving it sideways – I get the impression that Our Glorious Leader has a type.

As such this means another seat will be needed around the Central Midfield campfire, next time Messrs Hojbjerg, Skipp and Winks gather to chew the fat. Whether Bentancur proves to be any improvement on current produce remains to be seen, but he is another pair of legs for that midfield slot, so this can be considered a good week for anyone who has ever taken a look at our squad and tearfully warbled about its depth.

As for Kulusevski, this is apparently a chap fitted out for life in the more advanced positions, either coming in from the right or, intriguingly, straight through the centre (albeit as a supporting act rather than line-leading sort).

It would be a bit of a stretch therefore to suggest that in him we have that much-needed back-up to Harry Kane, but I think the gist is that he can be shoved into any of the attacking spots and expected to know his way around the premises.

As ever, one wishes him the best, and patience will be the watch-word, and so on and so forth – but having witnessed Lamela, Lucas, Bergwijn and Gil all try their luck in these wide-ish attacking positions, my enthusiasm for another off the production line is a little muted.

5. Non-Purchases

The failed attempts to snaffle Traore and Luis Diaz, while rather embarrassing, seem hardly calamitous.

The Traore affair struck me as good for a chuckle rather than having any obvious, analytical merit. Here was a chap who in the first place was undoubtedly muscular, and seemed nigh on unstoppable whenever he played against us. So far so good, one might suggest.

Get down to the nitty-gritty however, and a few plot-holes seemed to emerge. For all his muscles and love of a direct approach to attacking life, his end-product seemed pretty wild – and having sat through half a season of Emerson Royal’s struggles to deliver just one adequate cross from the right, I’m not sure Traore and his blast-it-anywhere approach is quite the remedy we’re after.

Moreover, the fellow is not a defender, and while Conte has some history of alchemy in this respect (Exhibit A, Victor Moses), the whole thing leaves me pretty sanguine about missing out on him.

As for Diaz, my Porto-dwelling chum Hawth has for some time been raving about the fellow’s attributes, and it is not hard to see why, so this one does rankle a tad. Even here though, the blow is softened considerably by the fact that Diaz earns his weekly wage in exactly the same position as one Son Heung-Min Esquire. So while the ignominy of rejection is again hard to swallow, this particular plot-twist did not exactly leave us any worse off than a month prior.

More of a frustration at AANP Towers is the passing of yet another transfer window without a sniff of a worthy understudy to that rotter Harry Kane. Lovely though it is to see Kane returning to his finest fettle in recent weeks, we are yet again left hoping that he navigates the remainder of the season without injury. Sonny, Bergwijn or potentially the new chap Kulusevski could all theoretically deputise on the odd occasion, but lose Kane for, say, six weeks or so and the panic button will be slammed with some gusto.

The failure to bring in another right wing-back is similarly being declared a mis-step by some sages, but in truth I’m rather encouraged by the 45-minute cameo of Matt Doherty against Leicester a few weeks back, so would be all for the chap being given a further stab at the gig, if only to keep Emerson Royal off stage.

6. Lloris

Perhaps the greatest triumph of the window, however, was the retention for the foreseeable future of Monsieur Lloris. It seemed a little bizarre that we even reached the stage that he was free to bat eyelids at other suitors, but Grandmaster Levy and chums move in mysterious ways their wonders to perform, and the moral of the story is that the chap remains ours for a couple more years, so it’s back-slaps and cigars all round.

While Lloris’ standards have taken a few notable wobbles in recent years, this season he has come out swinging, and our lot have looked all the better for it. Nobody is perfect of course, and I still wonder for example whether he might have waved a paw at that Chelsea opener from Ziyech in our last game – but one only has to cast the mind back to Gollini’s bizarre flap against Chelsea a few weeks earlier to realise how grateful we should be that Lloris is prepared to ride off into the sunset with AIA tattooed across his gut.

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Spurs match reports

Southampton 1-1 Spurs: Five Tottenham Talking Points

1. The Weirdly Rubbish First Half

At the risk of sending mixed messages, I found myself concluding that our lot were today equal parts utter garbage and frightfully unlucky. I’ll start with the garbage, not least because that’s exactly what our heroes did.

Having sung antiphons of joy just two days ago, about the virtues of our press and energy in winning possession high up the pitch, against Palace, I was deeply disturbed to find the boot on the other foot today. But on the other foot it was, as our lot turned from high pressers to high pressees. Any time they even thought about bringing the ball under control in the defensive third, they were molested by someone in red and had possession unceremoniously snatched from them.

With our entire team oddly accepting that this was the way of things and there was nothing that could be done to prevent it, Southampton’s opener was alarmingly inevitable, and it prompted the nasty suspicion that matters would degenerate further.

But at that point, Fate cleared her throat, declared, “All change”, and with the red card and equaliser delivered in just about a single motion, we had ourselves a completely different set-up.

Now the fellows paid to spout forth on TV seemed pretty convinced that our heroes did little to merit a second goal, which is of course their prerogative; and on hearing this I declared them both asses whose opinions I would never again entertain, which is of course my prerogative.

For clarity, our second half performance was far from faultless, and might have benefited from swifter exchanges of passes or, whisper it, an input or two from Ndombele. Nevertheless, in going up against a ten-man defence I thought we had a pretty decent stab at things, particularly when getting behind their defence on the right flank. The fact that their goalkeeper made ten saves would seem to support the notion the Pretty Decent Stab theory; the problem being rather that most of our attempts went straight at the gigantic fellow, rather than texting his reflexes to the east or west.

This, one might reasonably counter, is just part of life; and, if anything, represented a failing of which we were the authors. After all, no prizes are awarded for directing shots straight into the keepers’ mitts.

2. Disallowed Goals

However, you will recall that, mingled with the utter garbage of the first half, I referenced our Frightful Bad Luck, and this took the stage and belted out its greatest hits in the second half. For all the missed attempts, the point of contention is that we twice put the ball in the net, as required, and were still denied the contracted rewards. And this, put bluntly, is just not cricket.

The offside decision was a nonsense, and on multiple levels. While red and blue lines were helpfully scrawled across the screen to indicate who was where, the fact that they were level with each other rather gave the game away.

This was telling enough; but for added farce, the line for Kane was drawn from his armpit, rather than his head or foot, both of which were comfortably behind the Coloured Lines of Doom.

And if one really wants to gauge the accuracy of the decision, one only needs to imagine whether Southampton would have complained post-match had the goal been allowed – which it is difficult to imagine they would have done, what with Kane having been level with rather than ahead of the defender.

The second point of dispute was the Doherty incident. In fairness, this was more subjective than the offside call, so I am more inclined to bow the head and accept this one with good grace, but it nevertheless had one scratching the bean and re-watching about thirty times to detect where exactly any offence occurred. It seems reasonable to assert that had this incident taken place anywhere else on the pitch, play would have been waved on merrily; but referees rarely miss an opportunity to toot away in favour of a goalkeeper, and if nothing else the whole thing put to good use Matt Doherty’s permanent, open-jawed, hangdog expression.

We certainly might have done more to force the issue against the ten men, urgency only really elbowing its way into the fray in the final fifteen or so – but having pretty reasonably deposited ball in net on a couple of occasions prior to this, one does waggle the arms a bit and chunter on about the injustice of it all.

3. Winks

The inclusion of both Winks and Dele in itself delivered something of a pre kick-off jolt; the fact that this pair were included at the expense of Skipp and Lucas, two of the shinier of our lights in recent weeks, nudged the stakes that bit higher.

Winks delivered an oddly mixed bag. So keen was he to be noticed that he eagerly devoted much of his energy into being the Player Most Regularly Caught In Possession, an award for which, as noted above, there was pretty stiff competition from all quarters, in the first half in particular. In mitigation, he did at least have the decency to hare back after the ball in an attempt to win it back, whenever he was pickpocketed or passed straight to the opposition, but in general in those early knockings one was moved to scrawl his name under the heading of ‘Problem’ rather than ‘Solution’.

At this point, however, Winks delved into his box of tricks, and delivered a couple of eye-catching plot twists, in the shape of two pretty glorious passes – each of which resulted in the ball obligingly finding the net, and one of which also brought about Southampton’s red card).

The first of Winks’ glorious passes was the one that had Sonny chopped down in the area; the second the one that Kane tucked away only to be called offside. For all his eccentricities, in spinning around multiple times before playing the most obvious pass anyway, and losing possession on the edge of his own area, he evidently does still have it in him to split a defence when the stars align.

4. Dele

Dele, however, did not have such riches to offer.

Being a generous sort, I’ll toss him a smidge of sympathy for being stationed in what appeared to be a Right Midfield sort of spot, which seemed to be neither one thing nor another – and most pertinently was definitely not a Supporting Second Striker sort of role, as such diminishing his chances of success pretty heftily.

When he did turn up to support attacks he did so from a wider berth, which might have been better suited to Bergwijn or Gil, rather than the late, central burst from deep on which his reputation was built.

To his credit Dele did not shy away from matters. However, few mountains have ever been scaled or lands conquered simply by not shying away from matters. This was a time for brio and whizz, or at the very least for some seamless interplay with Sonny and Kane – but alas, Dele’s basket of S. I. with S. and K. was fresh out of produce, and he idled away his hour out on the right flank, getting sucked into pointless little skirmishes alongside Emerson Royal, which is the sort of activity that offers little value to anyone.

5. Doherty

With Reguilon bundled off the pitch for the avoidance of further unrest and general benefit of society, an unlikely opportunity presented itself for the rarely-sighted Matt Doherty. As ever, he delivered a performance that was well-intentioned and fully in compliance with company policy, but frustratingly light on any sort of quality.

With Doherty, as with the aforementioned Dele, a pretty hefty caveat must be swung into view, for here was another of our entourage who was dealt a fairly thankless positional hand. Doherty is evidently a soul who has been nurtured since birth for life on the right-hand side of the pitch, so all the good luck messages and back-slaps in the world would have been of pretty limited use to him once he was told to play out on the left.

And it very quickly became evident that his career as a left wing-back was indeed going to be considerably hamstrung, as the chap quickly took pains to indicate to the entire watching gallery that his left-sided lower limb was an appendage entirely foreign to him.

In fact, Doherty wandered about the place with the air of a man shocked to discover that he had a left leg at all. Having discovered it, however, he quickly made it plain that he was damned if he was ever going to be tempted to use it, with the result that every single time he touched the ball he shifted infield onto his right peg.

Gallingly, Doherty’s principal chances for glory fell to his left foot – but the man was nothing if not consistent, and preferred to contort his body into new and fantastical shapes rather than experiment with the mysterious limb, with the result that his various opportunities were belted by his right foot in every direction but the goal.

Ben Davies, bless his soul, did his best to ease the shock of left-leg-ownership that had beset Doherty, by taking every opportunity to motor off outside him and offer a bona fide left-footed option. But by and large, Doherty’s attacking potential was neutered, and by the end of proceedings our lot had pretty much given up on the left flank as an avenue of attack.

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Spurs match reports

Spurs 2-2 Liverpool: Four Tottenham Talking Points

1. Kane

The more eagle-eyed regulars at the AANP Arms may have noticed that since his summer antics, that rotter Harry Kane has not exactly been the most popular so-and-so around these parts. However, if there were one moment yesterday that went some way towards mending bridges it was not his goal, and certainly not the never-ending stream of wasted opportunities to put the game to bed.

No, it was that moment midway through the first half when Kane completely forgot that he’d rather leave N17 for shiny pots in Manchester, and, rather carried away by the fun of it all, went flying in to win a loose ball and sent his opponent cartwheeling off into the north London air.

The legal minutiae of the punishment he then received will be pored over below. What caught the eye was the fact that here was a rare outbreak of passion from the man.

Typically sighted over the last six months looking forlorn, exhaling glumly and generally giving the impression of a fellow who would much rather be elsewhere, there was something remarkably uplifting about the sight of Kane being so carried on the wave of joy and energy brought about by his goal that he would merrily go flying, studs up, into an opponent. In short, it was nice to see him looking once more like he cared.

It arguably helped him feel more like his old self to have all the furniture arranged around him specifically to replicate the good old days of Poch. There, never more than ten yards away, like an obedient lamb in a nursery rhyme, was Sonny, the pair now deployed as a front two; fast arriving in the rear-view mirror was Dele Alli, supplementing attacks with well-timed bursts from midfield just as he did in the glory days. The whole production could not have dripped in more nostalgia if they had all worn Under Armour kits with great big blue flashes across the front.

Being part of a dedicated front two, and not just any front-two but a front-two specifically instructed to play on the counter-attack (and curiously aided in this respect by a Liverpool defence that seemed hell-bent on pushing right up to halfway and allowing us to race beyond them at every opportunity), Kane also benefited positionally. By and large, this had the welcome consequence of ensuring that when shots needed shooting in and around the penalty area, Kane was on hand to carry out his obligations.

This may sound obvious, but as we’re all well aware this has not always been the case, such is his unwavering faith in his abilities as a deep-lying creator. Yesterday, mercifully, the instruction was clear, and Kane lurked throughout at the northernmost point of the structure.

2. Winks

Opinion seems to have varied regarding the precise identity of our standout performer. The rejuvenated Dele has attracted a healthy chunk of popular opinion, while several members of the fourth estate have sung the praises of Sonny (which seemed a rummy one to me in truth).

Here at AANP Towers, the congratulatory rosette would probably be pinned to the breast of young H. Winks Esq.

To say that this was his finest performance in several years, while true, would also be fairly faint praise, the Winks bar having been lowered pretty dramatically since, I would suggest, the 2019 Champions League Final. But nevertheless, yesterday’s was the sort of product that would be most gratefully lapped up on a weekly basis. Particularly in the absence of young Skipp, Winks provided the engine that kept the whole machine ticking over, if you follow.

Winks has never been wanting for enthusiasm, so it was no surprise that this was in evidence throughout yesterday. The challenge with the recent vintage of Winks has been that he has developed about himself much in common with a tortoise reeling itself back into the security of its shell. Winks has gradually taken fewer and fewer risks with his passing, ultimately getting to the point of folding in on himself, with the result that he stagnates rather than ignites our play.

Yesterday, however, he tore about the place like a man who, if not quite actually at the peak of his powers, had a one-way ticket to get there and was thoroughly enjoying the journey. It did of course help that he was up against a Liverpool midfield cobbled together from their reserves, veterans and what looked like a minor plucked from the middle of his GCSEs, but it was to Winks’ credit that he took full advantage.

When receiving the ball, he popped it along briskly; crucially, he looked to move it forward at every opportunity; and when Liverpool were in possession, he rolled up the sleeves and scrapped away at them.

While it is easy – and rather lazy – to get carried away by the goals scored, Winks’ role in both neatly captured much that was good about his work. In the build-up to the first goal, he contributed one of the lengthiest slide tackles in living memory, seeming to begin his challenge somewhere around the centre circle and then sliding approximately a mile and a half before winning possession from one of Liverpool’s midfield competition winners. Play continued, the ball reached Ndombele, and before you could say, ‘Gorgeously-weighted and -shaped pass’, we were ahead.

Then for our second, Winks managed to combine all the core qualities of great central midfielding into a single, digestible nugget. First he played a neat one-two within in his own half to remove from the equation half of the Liverpool midfield. He then hared off over halfway, in the sort of ball-carrying operation that is fairly basic when you break it down, but pretty dashed effective at the right place and time. At this point, however, the value of the whole manoeuvre hinged on his output. Here, after all, was a man who had spent the last two years taking every opportunity to pivot one-eighty and find a safe passing option to his rear.

There need not have been any cause for concern. The Harry Winks of 19-12-21 was a man in whom the creative flames burned bright, and with Son and Kane already in motion ahead of him, his curved pass around the defender and into space was an excellent choice. The execution was actually not quite perfect, but Alisson helpfully trialled a new party-trick, and the net result was an open goal for Sonny.

An asterisk should probably be printed highlighting that Winks’ contributions were by no means limited to these two goals. Rather, while these made for pleasing additions to the highlights reel, they were indicative of an overall performance characterised by equal parts feist and intelligence.

And this bodes well in the broader scheme of things. With Hojbjerg looking every inch a man who is rolled out to perform in every minute of every game without respite, gulping oxygen and retaining limbs in their sockets by sheer force of will, the all-action performance of Winks potentially offers a credible alternative in midfield.

3. Dele

As with Winks, so Dele similarly took the opportunity to unveil his most impressive day’s work in a good few years.

Dele, like Kane, seemed to benefit considerably from the formation tweak (which rather makes you think, what?), and, like Kane, cavorted about the place like it was somewhere between 2016 and 2018.

Nominally one of the midfield three, Dele beavered as necessary when we were on the back-foot, albeit with greater proportions of enthusiasm than competence for the dirty work of central midfield.

However, it was when we nicked possession and the forward gallop began that Dele really rediscovered the joys of his youth.

Such was the all action, no plot nature of the spectacle that I lost track of the number of times our lot found themselves wandering the Liverpool penalty area with not a defensive soul in sight, and while it was galling in the extreme to witness a whole procession of straightforward chances go the way of all flesh, there was something extremely comforting in seeing Dele front and centre of things, by virtue of his well-timed sorties from midfield.

It was prime Dele (apart, I suppose from the execution, around which there were almost visible layers of rust). That the Liverpool midfield repeatedly lost sight of him as he slunk forward says much of the natural gift for timing that resides within him.

As with Winks it is too early to slaughter the fattened calf and crack open the vintage stuff just yet, but the signs were hugely promising, both in terms of his individual form and also the potential tactical option his rejuvenation might provide.

A final note on both Winks and Dele: having regressed so alarmingly under both Jose and Nuno, our latest Glorious Leader can probably bask in some credit for the improvements on display yesterday. Two swallows are admittedly a different kettle of fish from a whole summer, but the omens are good, and the critical difference would appear to be the change in leadership. Bravo, Conte.

4. The Refereeing

Any sequence of events that results in Jurgen Klopp reaching a level of apoplexy fit to make his explode is, of course, to be applauded, so in this respect yesterday’s oversight of proceedings was an absolute joy.

However, had a red card been brandished at Harry Kane, the Defence Lawyers would have had a devil of a time wriggling out of it, because by the letter of the law all boxes appeared to have been ticked.

There have certainly been plenty of instances of dubious refereeing decisions going against our lot – against these very opponents, and in fact, in this very match – so one has certainly learnt to take this particular smoothness with the various rough calls over time, but frankly any other decisions made are pretty irrelevant. Had Kane seen red there could not have been too many complaints, and given how early the Kane incident occurred, one ought to sympathise. One does not. One chortles. But one ought to sympathise.

Similarly, had Emerson (who from the AANP vantage point, was comfortably our weakest performer) been penalised for his less-than-dainty interference with Jota in the penalty area, one would not have had much of a counter-argument. However, as Dele can attest, this was not a day on which shoves to the back were deemed sufficient to merit sanction.

The claim from Dele was no doubt weaker than that from Jota, but in both instances, as ever, the AANP take is to wag a disapproving finger at the defenders in question, and suggest that they do not give the referee the option of giving a penalty.

There was also a crude exchange of views between Winks and some Liverpool defender, which resulted in our returning hero being flattened in a manner that in most other areas of the pitch would have drawn a perfunctory whistle. However, by that stage I was automatically defaulting to the wise words of my old man, AANP Senior, who would drill into me in my youth that, “The referee’s decision is final,” thereby closing the case without the option of appeal.

It only remained for Salah’s handball to be merrily waved away as an offence that didn’t take place at the right time, and Robertson to protest wide-eyed innocence at his own attempt at full-blown assault. By which stage there had been so much whizzing and banging that I had lost track of whether or not I was supposed to feel aggrieved.

Within such a strange, contradictory set of events (less possession but far more clear chances; good luck with the Kane decision, bad luck with the Salah handball) it has been quite a task to make sense of things, and far easier simply to pour a splash of early afternoon bourbon and enjoy – but the gist of it all seems to be that this Conte era has got something about it.

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Spurs match reports

Mura 2-1 Spurs: Five Tottenham Talking Points

1. Sessegnon

Young Sessegnon probably deserves the first column inch or two. Indeed, the casual observer, drinking in only the lurid headlines, might infer from the chronology of events that Sessegnon was the sole architect of this latest calamity. One would, of course, understand the sentiment, as early red cards rarely chivvy matters along in positive and serene fashion; but those of us who watched the piece unfold in real-time would be well aware that the truth is entirely more disturbing, involving as it did ineptitude and complacency from all bedecked in lilywhite faded blackcurrant and lime.

Back to Sessegnon. The football gods showed the full range of their cruel sense of humour by shoving him and his return to the fold front and centre of the pre-match hype. And I dn’t mind admitting that AANP fully subscribed to this narrative. When we signed him a couple of years back he was the bright young thing of English football, arguably further in his development than Bellingham, Saka et al.

And frankly, he might – and hopefully will – still be a roaring success. One red card, after all, doth not a failure make.

But by golly, it was one heck of a red card.

I note that some of lilywhite persuasion are trying to argue that his misdeeds were not worth two yellow cards. This, for avoidance of doubt, is utter rot. The first caution was idiotic to an immeasurable degree – making no attempt to play the ball, and aiming a kick at an opponent on the gallop. Nor was it one of those that could be filed under the heading ‘Tactical Foul’. Not that I’m a particular fan of such things, but sometimes these cynical numbers are desperately needed to prevent a highly dangerous counter-attack – this was not of the ilk.

And having already been booked, to leap into another flying challenge – again, hardly in a goal-saving context – defied belief. To those arguing that contact was minimal, I curtly reply that the young fool should not give the referee the option to make such a decision.

It has become something of a habit on these pages to witter on about how staggeringly block-headed footballers are as a collective, but these two bookings seemed to plumb new depths of stupidity.

On the bright side, young Master S. has now set his bar so low that whatever he does in his forthcoming engagements will represent vast improvement. Maybe he’s not so thick after all.

2. Dele

To say that Dele looked a shadow of his former self would be a bit stiff on shadows.

The all-singing, all-dancing buccaneer of a few years back, with velvety touch and a knack for timing a late burst into the area, is such a distant memory that I now wonder if he ever existed at all. If the current incumbent of his shirt gives a dam about his football, he disguises the fact in pretty convincing fashion.

Each time Dele received the ball yesterday he generally took six touches, lost possession and then promptly lost interest in the game altogether, preferring to wander off to a quiet spot of land, alone with his thoughts. And it was this latter part that represented a new low, this business of registering zero emotion once he had lost the ball. For a few years now, his output when in possession has been dreadful; but to see him shrug his shoulders and slow down to a walk once dispossessed really made one grind the teeth and hiss a bit.

If he really is trying to play himself back into favour, by golly he is going about it in a most peculiar fashion.

3. Kane

As for that rotter Harry Kane, I must confess his performance had me scratching at the old bean. Neither one thing nor another – or, to be more accurate, both one thing and another, if you follow my drift.

Sorry if that’s a bit cryptic. What I mean is that he managed to incorporate a pretty wide range of features within his night’s work.

For almost all of the first half he was as dreadful as anyone else. On that I think we can all agree. He lumbered about the place like a man donning his boots for the first time in a few years, failed to hold up the ball, failed to find teammates with intended passes and generally looked like a man who, on encountering the Slovenian mid-tablers, was a long way out of his depth.

The one moment in the first half that offered a glimpse of a record goalscorer was when he was stationed within the penalty area, and on receiving the ball conjured a shot from nowhere. He missed, narrowly, but the incident was still in pretty startling contrast to all that had gone before. The lesson, I recall murmuring at the time, seemed to be that dash everything else, Kane should just stick to the penalty area and get his shots off. No shame in that.

Then in the second half, when he spotted his friends arriving – in the form of Sonny and Lucas – Kane suddenly perked up, much like a small child who – well, who has spotted his friends arriving. The link-up play improved, he seemed more of a threat in possession and, to his credit, took his goal with a hefty dollop of aplomb.

And yet despite all this, the feeling still persisted that, unbeknownst to him, some rascal in the changing room had filled at least one of his boots with cement. He seemed to be having a devil of a time controlling his feet, and in the end appeared to give up on them and let them do as they pleased.

All things considered, it was a rather peculiar performance. The only certainty was that this was not a chap for whom anyone will ever pay £150m in a hurry.

4. Sanchez

I don’t suppose there are many tomes out there that have recorded that when Davinson Sanchez bounded onto the pitch in the latter stages of the win vs Leeds on Sunday, he actually managed to put not one foot wrong during the entirety of his cameo. It may only have been fifteen minutes or so, but it was a faultless fifteen minutes or so.

Football, however, being a pretty fickle mistress, I suspect that while Sunday’s input went under the radar, you won’t be able to throw a stone in the northern hemisphere without hitting someone ready to yowl about Sanchez’s ghastly contributions to yesterday’s disaster.

I have heard it said – by my Spurs-supporting chum Dave, no less – that Sanchez deserves some sympathy for being played out of position, on the left of a back three. This, as you might well imagine, received pretty short shrift at AANP Towers. If he were a right-handed darts player being asked to play on the left of a back-three, I might tilt my head, and utter an understanding word or two. But a right-footed, international centre-back being asked to play on the left of a back three – against Slovenian mid-tablers, dash it – ought to swan around the pitch producing the performance of his life.

Instead, not once but twice for heaven’s sake, Sanchez delivered a mistake so basic that all in attendance could anticipate it perfectly, well before it had happened. Even as he gathered pace, it seemed pretty clear that he was going to overshoot, be forced to cut back inside and end up off-balance and in coordinates entirely inappropriate for the job at hand. And so it transpired. Twice.

5. Same Players, Terrible Performances

I thought that the one soul to emerge with a modicum of credit was young Skipp, who at least seemed to pick up on the urgency of the occasion (although even he let himself down somewhat in the second half, misplacing and miscontrolling more and more as the game progressed).

This, however, is largely irrelevant. By the AANP reckoning – which admittedly is far from infallible – four of the worst Spurs performances of my lifetime have now occurred within the last 12 months (Zagreb away, Villa at home, Arsenal away, Mura away). I suspect there are a few more, given the number of games under Jose in which we scored early and then tried to defend the penalty area for 85 minutes.

One may quibble over the contents and ordering of that list, but what’s notable is that in this period we have had 4 different managers – which suggests that the common denominator here is the players.

It’s pretty meaningless gubbins for them to emerge after the game and talk about how such things are ‘Not good enough’ and ‘Unacceptable’, (although I have found that sinking a splash of bourbon each time I hear one of these phrases is a pretty handy way to numb the pain) when a month later it will simply happen again. There is no accountability at all, no repercussions. More or less the same mob simply reappear the following week. They can’t be placed on disciplinary or performance management courses – or simply sacked – as would happen if most of us under-performed in the day job.

Now it’s hardly a practical solution to suggest they be replaced en masse by various youth players who do not share their complacency and sense of entitlement, but as neither fining nor physically thrashing them for poor performances are allowed, I’m at a bit of a loss as to how to punish them for peddling such rubbish, and have no idea how one might buck them up and improve their attitudes. Over to you, Conte.

Tweets here; AANP’s own book, Spurs’ Cult Heroes, here, lest ye be thinking of Christmas gifts

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Spurs match reports

Vitesse 1-0 Spurs: Four Tottenham Talking Points

1. Eleven Strangers

It might come as some surprise to those who have witnessed AANP rise in incandescence to yell a thousand foul-mouthed curses at our lot over the years, but I actually give the players a lot of slack when, as tonight, they are tossed in as an eleven for the first time, each having never played with the other ten previously (and, on the evidence of tonight, possibly not having met before).

In fact, several Spurs-supporting chums of mine received a message immediately prior to kick-off to precisely this effect. The gist of my thinking at around 17.30 BST was that while these were eleven relatively talented individuals, it rarely works to throw any eleven together for the first time (and that’s the crucial bit – it was their first time). Were this lot to play as a collective for five or six consecutive weeks they might develop into a heck of a unit, because goodness knows there are enough amongst them skilled at keepy-uppies and whatnot. But assemble them like the sort of ragtag group of mercenaries one sees thrown together by fate in mindless Hollywood action fare, and the bar for their first outing will be set low.

So, when Lo Celso, Gil and Scarlett tried a zippy little exchange of passes towards the end of the first half that ended with the ball rather apologetically rolling into an empty space in the Vitesse area, the reaction at AANP Towers was forgiving. The conciliatory hand gesture could be interpreted by those who know me best as meaning “Fret ye not, oh lilywhite heroes, you are forgiven, for AANP understands that razor-sharp interplay takes time to develop.”

One might therefore assume that vengeance points towards Our Glorious Leader, for having cobbled together the aforementioned group of mercenaries. But even here, the mood at AANP Towers is one of understanding and magnanimity. Now AANP is the last person to advocate such dastardly fare as match-fixing, but the arithmetic suggests that if ever there were a good time to rest an entire eleven ahead of a visit to the least bad West Ham team in decades, this was probably that time. For even with the defeat tonight, we are three points behind Rennes, with three games left to play – including Rennes themselves at home. Do the necessaries back at base, and this Europa gubbins ought to take care of itself.

In short, some sympathy for the players for being handed a tough gig; and at the same time few complaints about the team selection.

2. Lazy Attitudes

However, if anyone in lilywhite – or wild elderberry or whatever the heck that that oddity is – thinks that the unfamiliar starting XI grants them immunity from criticism they can unpack another think and sharpish.

No matter what the circumstances, the players on stage ought as a minimum to have run themselves into the ground and have needed to have been carried off by the time the credits rolled.

Instead, we were treated to such sights as Lo Celso losing possession and slowing to a walk, exerting only the energy necessary to fling his arms up skyward. Possession will be lost, alas, such things are inevitable and I’m not about to chide an attacker for attempting a spot of creativity that does not materialise; but for heaven’s sake, then to react by simply giving up and expecting others to retrieve the situation is dastardly conduct, and if I had my way I’d subject the chap to a couple of lashes across the back, without right of appeal.

I single out Lo Celso merely because that particular incident sticks in the mind’s eye, but he was hardly alone. As Glenn put it on the tellybox afterwards, none of that rabble treated this bash like a Cup Final (I paraphrase), when as professionals representing our club, they ought.

Picking on another of the guilty parties, young Gil is one whose effort generally is pretty admirable, but he was chiefly to blame for allowing the chappie who scored the freedom of the D in which to arrange his volley.

And so on. One after another of our number seemed oddly lackadaisical, until, inevitably, we fell behind, at which juncture it was, of course, fresh injections of urgency all round.

Again, at the risk of labouring the point – attacking interplay that doesn’t quite strike oil is forgivable, given that these fellows are not necessarily used to each other’s games; but failure to strain every sinew is not.

3. Back-Up Players

Nor, to my eyes, was this only a failing of attitude. It also struck me that a number of supposedly talented players – seasoned internationals and whatnot – were putting in some pretty solid impressions of a bunch of bang-average performers.

If any of the midfield three were under orders to march in and dictate the game from start to finish, they did a pretty good job of disguising the fact from human observation. Lo Celso did show some bright ideas going forward (more on him below) but Dele and Winks were too peripheral in possession, and none of these three really provided the necessary protection for the back-four whenever the time came to lower the shields.

All of which was bad enough on the day, but given that this was a chance (and, indeed, the latest chance) for all eleven to prove to the Brains Trust that they are worthy of the First Choice XI, it was pretty alarming fodder from all concerned. Heaven forbid, but after seeing Winks, Dele and Lo Celso gradually lose the plot against the might of Vitesse, the old bean does perspire a tad at the thought of either Hojbjerg or, heaven forbid, young Skipp (currently on 4 yellow cards, lest we forget) being rendered unfit for public service in the coming games vs West Ham and Man Utd.

Similarly, upfront, while young Scarlett did not want for effort, he looked every inch a 17 year-old playing against seasoned pros. To chide him for this would be a bit like moaning at the sun for setting each evening. In short, it’s hardly his fault. But should a piano fall from the sky and onto the head of Kane it will put us in one heck of a pickle; and should any errant keys from the rapidly disintegrating piano fly off into the surroundings and poke young Sonny in the eye, I dread to speculate as to the players from whom our next goals might emanate.

It’s a big old squad, but judging by tonight’s fare, those first reserves do not fill to the gills with confidence.

4. Lo Celso

As alluded to, Lo Celso occasionally threatened to break into something resembling a pretty handy performance, which makes his eventual output all the more frustrating.

It can probably at least be said in his defence that what little quality we did produce going forward seemed at some point to pass through his size nines en route. In particular, the Gil shot that hit the bar was teed up by Senor GLC, and I’m pretty sure that when Bergwijn fluffed his lines halfway through the second half, Lo Celso’s were one of those pair of hooves that passed the parcel over halfway.

However, on the whole, without wanting to put too fine a point on it, not much that he tried actually worked. Passes seemed not quite to find their man; attempted dribbles seemed to result in him being tackled; and the whole thing was neatly seemed up right at the death when we packed their area with bodies only for his delivery to sale harmlessly into the stands. In a curious way, his performance reminded me of the early years of Lucas Moura in lilywhite, when he would flatter to deceive before running into a dead end and losing both his bearings and the ball.

Now when Lo Celso played against Mura a few weeks back, he again seemed a shadow of his potential self, when really the stage was set for him to run the show. Things only really changed when the big guns entered the fray – with Lucas, Sonny and Kane around him, Lo Celso played the Number 10 role like a man born to do so.

The nagging frustration is that he seems to need, as a matter of absolute necessity, great players around him to play at his best. Must this be the case, particularly against fairly middling opponents? No doubt having better players to each of the north, east and west will make the day-job a lot easier for anyone; but Lo Celso ought to be good enough still to run shows like tonight’s without needing the assistance of some of the best in the world around him.

On the bright side, as mentioned above, tonight’s result ought not to harm our chances of ultimately winning this dashed trophy; and ought also to enhance our chances vs West Ham on Sunday. It’s rather soured the evening here at AANP Towers though, make no mistake.

Hither for tweets.

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Spurs match reports

Newcastle 2-3 Spurs: Six Tottenham Talking Points

1. Coming Back From Behind

Given the frenzied build-up to this one, it was entirely predictable that within two minutes our defence would have waved obliging hands to guide various Newcastle players into our area and nod in an opener. It is one of the more peculiar traits of our lot. If there’s an opposition player making a return from injury, you can bet your mortgage on him scoring against us; if a reserve goalkeeper is being plucked from obscurity just sit back and watch him dive around the place like a feline with elastic in its joints.

So of course, with Newcastle’s takeover having been the front-page story all week one could guarantee that for our lot to concede early would be up there with death and taxes.

And for ten minutes or so, with the ref seemingly granting an amnesty on on-pitch violence, Newcastle players flung themselves in around the limbs, and it looked like we might be bullied into submission. The outlook was not promising.

Mercifully, thereafter it pretty quickly became evident that Newcastle were dreadful, so matters largely took care of themselves. The lad Saint-Maximin was a slippery sort, but that aside they offered nothing in possession, and even more usefully when not in possession they simply stood around and watched as our lot knocked the ball around them in leisurely fashion. The lack of pressure applied to our mob when we were in possession was mind-boggling, but given that one takes the rough as a Spurs fan, one damn well does not shirk an opportunity to take the smooth, and it does not come much smoother than it came yesterday.

However, while Newcastle’s surrender undoubtedly helped chivvy things along, a few words of acclaim are nevertheless due to our lot for not folding like a pack of cards in the face of the early onslaught, particularly as the technique of utter capitulation had been feverishly practised in the weeks before the international break.

This time, we went behind and dug in, Skipp in particular to the fore in ensuring that Newcastle could not simply waltz through to goal at will. It might have ended up as the most one-sided 2-3 battering ever seen, but at 1-0 down there was a genuine risk that the wheels might fly off, so bravo our lot for getting back into the game.

2. Ndombele

Much like a girl in a nursery rhyme, when Tanguy Ndombele is good he’s very, very good. It has taken a few weeks to stumble upon, but the 4-2-3-1 system, gifting him the freedom to do whatever the hell he wants behind the bona fide attacking trio without any compulsion to track back, is tailor-made for a man of his talents and outlook.

Yesterday he shone both as the creative spark through whom wholesome things happened, and also as an additional attacker, popping up in threatening areas to add weight to the general force of attack (witness Exhibit A, his goal).

When Ndombele first arrived, he struck me as a chap potentially in the Mousa Dembele mould – capable of gathering the ball in his own half and mazily bringing it over halfway, turning defence into attack, bypassing opposing midfielders and so on and so forth. The flaw in that plan, however, was that such a deep-lying role would require him to roll up the sleeves and sweat off a gallon or two as and when the need arose. And while Ndombele is capable of winning the occasional tackle, one can see that this is not the sort of thing that motivates him when he draws back the curtains of a morning.

Ndombele is the kid in the playground who delighted in dribbling around everyone else, and then going back and dribbling around them all over again just to rub it in their faces. Such kids are not motivated by the thought of tracking back thirty yards to intercept. With his defensive shackles removed, Ndombele can simply pop up in whichever attacking area tickles his fancy, and treat us all to his endless bag of foot-based trickery. By the time the curtain came down yesterday he seemed to be having an absolute blast.

Oh that Dele might have shown such flair when granted the same opportunities, rather than loitering on the ball endlessly and attempting countless nutmegs. For the foreseeable, the role is Ndombele’s.

3. Lucas

As tends to happen when lining up alongside neon-lit sorts like Kane and Son, the performance of Lucas went rather under the radar, but for approximately the umpteenth consecutive occasion I thought he bordered on the marvellous.

Where Saint-Maximin receives possession and all around lose their minds, Lucas tends to do fairly similar things and the general reaction is to complain that Kane is dropping too deep. It’s possibly a stretch to say that Lucas is in the category as Saint-Maximin but he’s not far off, and this (and, I suggest, last) season he has gone up a notch by virtue of sorting out his compass and not charging off into cul-de-sacs.

This new, improved Lucas now picks up the ball and leaps past two or three flailing challenges, before – and this is the crucial bit – doing something useful with the ball. Typically, he either plays a sensible and pretty darned effective pass, or gets hacked down (witness Exhibit B, his role in Son’s goal – a goal that exemplified all that was good about both his and Ndombele’s performance).

I’m also rather a fan of the fact that Lucas does not feel chained to his flank, or even his starting position, but is happy to gallop infield and central as the mood takes him, whilst always beavering away with the general aim of heading towards goal. As mentioned, he tends to feature relatively lowly on the list of superstars, but I’d suggest he’s been one of our best performers this season, and is a pretty critical cog in the 4-2-3-1 machine.

4. Reguilon

The halcyon days of peak Rose and Walker might be long gone, but on his good days young Senor Reguilon does remind us of all that a good attacking full-back should be, and yesterday was one such day.

As I recall he arrived on these shores with something of a reputation for getting amongst the goals, so whenever he does treat us to his forward-looking forays I feel that it is the least we deserve. Yesterday, with Newcastle presenting such limp opposition it evidently struck him as rude not to gallop forward at every opportunity, and he augmented our play well.

With Sonny always happy to cut in towards goal, and Ndombele making fairly frequent guest appearances on the left, Reguilon’s presence helped contribute to the collective application of foot to Newcastle’s throat. His presence alone gave them a set of positional problems to deal with, on top of which his output was pretty impressive too, not least in setting up our opener and then getting Shelvey sent off.

On top of which he also helped save someone’s life, which I’m not sure even peak Rose and Walker ever did.

5. Son’s Corners

It would be easy to relegate this to a footnote, but by golly Son swings in some delicious corners.

It does not seem so long ago that I would perch on the balcony of AANP Towers and yowl in frustration at the sight of Christian Eriksen raising one arm (what is that about? Why do all corner-takers raise one arm before flinging over their product? No matter what sort of corner, they always raise one arm) and then sending in an abysmal corner that barely reached the shin of the first defender, an output all the more frustrating given the undoubted talent of the man.

By contrast, Sonny never really struck me as the sort who would be a set-piece wizard, and yet there it was in glorious technicolour, a whole slew of corners whipped right into the business-end of the penalty area, and really meriting more than for everyone to stand and gawp at them. It was a real shame that Lucas hit the bar from one of them, because I can’t remember seeing our lot so consistently deliver them so well.

6. Dier’s Mistake

Anyone who has had the privilege of playing alongside AANP will know that I am no stranger to the occasional own-goal, and as such I am rarely inclined to criticise the man who does the deed. The way I see it, scoring an own goal is generally an indication that a defender is at least in the appropriate sort of area, to carry out his duties and typically has just had too little time to react to a ball rapidly approaching (one might point to Exhibit C, yesterday, Dier’s own own goal).

So it is not for the own goal that I chide young Master Dier. It is for the needless and rash concession of the free-kick, in the dying seconds, that brought about the own-goal in the first place.

What the hell was Dier thinking, charging out of position and blundering through the back of his man so? And this, to be clear, is a multi-faceted complaint. For a start, when has the blunder-through-the-back approach ever resulted in anything other than a free-kick? Secondly, the whole routine was thoroughly unnecessary, given that the Newcastle player had his back to goal, was out near the touchline and at least 30 yards from goal. And thirdly, the entire team had managed the game to near-perfection until that point. Granted, we had not scored the fourth that we really ought to have, but that aside we simply did not let Newcastle touch the ball – either rolling it around amongst ourselves at the back, or neatly playing between the lines further forward.

It was thoroughly professional game management, ruined by Dier’s clumsiness and rashness – and very nearly cost us the win (credit to all concerned for then managing the following five minutes expertly, not allowing Newcastle to touch the ball).

That aside, Dier had a good game; but this is hardly the first time he has committed exactly that sort of foul, and a central defender of his experience ought by now to have cut those mistakes from his game.

But let it not distract too much from another well-deserved win, in challenging circumstances. Back-slaps all round.

Tweets and whatnot

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Spurs 2-1 Aston Villa: Five Tottenham Talking Points

1. Formation

Even before kick-off the teamsheet was a pretty welcome sight for the sore AANP eyes. One does not wish ill upon one’s fellow man of course, but nevertheless it was with some relief that I noted that Dele had been quietly escorted from the starting line-up, and the apparatus instead arranged for a 4-2-3-1.

The use of 4-2-3-1 in midweek had, as remarked on these very pages at the time, given our lot far better shape and organisation – but, as also noted at the time, only so much could be read into its deployment against a team of bobbish but pretty limited part-timers. Seeing the system put to use today against a Villa team that has steadily improved in recent years felt like a far greater test of its efficacy, so it was pretty pleasing to report that while hardly the perfect performance this was nevertheless a massive improvement on recent weeks. A low bar admittedly, and they’d have been hard pressed to be any worse, but still – the set-up was better.

Put bluntly, within the 4-2-3-1 everyone seemed at least to know what their roles were. This was in pretty crucial contrast to the 4-3-3 trotted out in recent weeks, when the midfield 3 in particular had seemed oddly lost, just wandering about the pitch with the air of chappies new to the place and without a compass between them.

Today, at least, one got the impression that all in attendance had been briefed on the general strategy – again, a vast improvement on last weekend, when one rather suspected that that all concerned had been granted licence to do whatever they pleased, wherever they pleased. Today, the agenda seemed a bit clearer. Two lads sitting in front of the back-four; further north, Ndombele given the freedom of N17 (and permission to ignore some of the game’s more onerous, defensive duties); the full-backs encouraged to amble up the pitch and sniff around when the urge took them; and Kane under instruction to temper his urges to drop deep.

2. The Midfield Three

That said, one can unwrap the greatest formation in history and it would count for nothing if those individuals tasked with effecting it simply shrug their shoulders and fade into obscurity. Mercifully, today all eleven (plus subs) had the dignity to engage the grey matter and apply themselves to the task at hand.

In midfield, Skipp was restored and wasted little time demonstrating his many virtues. In his love for a full-blooded midfield challenge this young specimen shares much in common with an AANP hero of yesteryear, Paul Ince, and it was rather frustrating to note that, also in common with Ince, he seems to be developing the knack of picking up yellow cards simply for being a player of tough-tackling ilk, rather than for actually committing any particular heinous crimes. While we may just have to purse the lips and accept that Skippy will pick up yellows more often than not, this week’s was particularly harsh, given that a) he won the ball cleanly enough, and b) even if he hadn’t won the ball, there was little about the challenge or its position on the pitch to merit a caution.

It was to his credit that despite being under such observation for over half the match his energy in that role of sentry-keeper was undiminished. Indeed, when things did begin to creak a tad in the second half, Skippy’s were the limbs, on more than one occasion, that extended to goal-saving effect inside our own area.

Alongside him, Hojbjerg seemed to have a little more direction than in recent weeks. While his starting berth tended to be deep, alongside Skipp, he seemed happy enough to trot forward if circumstances warranted, most notably of course, for his goal.

And the main beneficiary of all this elbow grease was Monsieur Ndombele, who treated us to a pretty Ndombele sort of performance – occasional flashes of pretty dizzying genius; several attempted passes not more than a whisker or three from scything open the Villa defence; and a lot of his time on the pitch seemingly spent in gulping in oxygen and trying to keep up with play. And this was fine by me to be honest, as the system is pretty much created specifically for him to treat us to flashes of p.d.g. and passes that scythe. With Skipp and Hojbjerg in attendance Ndombele can essentially get away with being something of a luxury, with little in the way of defensive duties.

What matters is that he produces enough flashes of creative goodness to trouble the opposition, and this he just about did. In the first half in particular he barged his way onto the front of the stage fairly often, linking merrily enough with Lucas and Sonny. No game-changing moments today, and he faded a little in the second half, but it seems reasonable to say he played his part, and I imagine the Number 10 role is his for the foreseeable.

And there is some competition in that respect. Lo Celso was given fifteen minutes in the role at the end of proceedings, and produced a couple of near misses, albeit without exactly pulling strings; and one suspects that Lucas, Dele and even the fifth Beatle might equally be deployed in the role, within this particular formation.

3. Emerson Royal

Ndombele was not the only soul to benefit from the presence of the Skipp-Hojbjerg axis in front of the back-four, as E. Royal Esq. was another who needed little encouragement to toddle forward and see what delights awaited.

It would be stretching things to say he’s Beckham-esque in his crossing, but Royal certainly made himself useful in supplementing our attacks and offering a wide option, showing all the willing of young Tanganga in previous weeks but with perhaps a little more polish and nous in his doings.

None of which is to suggest that he neglected his defensive duties, far from it. Indeed, I rather enjoy the commitment he shows in racing into battle with his opposing left-sided attacker, seemingly determined that if there is a fifty-fifty on his particular patch of turf he will lick his lips and charge straight in. One admires the attitude.

4. Romero

In recent weeks we have been treated to increased sightings of our newest centre-back, and I suspect AANP is not alone in upturning the thumb in approval at the young bean’s execution of duties.

Romero is, by and large, a calming sort of presence at the back. There is a caveat to this – which was in full view today – to which I shall return anon, but in carrying out the business of winning aerial battles and positioning himself just so, he seems to do most of those things one would hope for from a competent centre-back. Not the worst in possession of the thing either, which is always a bonus.

Moreover, given that Villa could not go thirty seconds without hurling a long throw into our box, and also had a whole sackful of corners to lob in similarly, I was pretty impressed at how Romero – and indeed all in lilywhite – coped with the barrage, this sort of thing having been something of a weakness in the THFC constitution to date this season.

The elephant in the room is of course his rather reckless and ill-timed lunge, immediately preceded by a decision to come haring out of position, and swiftly followed by both concession of a goal and a yellow card for his troubles. I feel that in our recent history we have had rather enough centre-backs who can produce that ‘Serene For Most Of The Game But Liable to Magic A Calamity From Nowhere’ routine, so while it would be fun for Messrs Dier and Sanchez to have another with whom to share stories and slap backs, I do hope that today’s moment of madness was an exception rather than a norm.

5. Sonny

A job well done from just about everyone in lilywhite then, but it seems reasonable to suggest that Sonny should take home whatever gongs are on offer for doing the most important bits and bobs.

In the second half in particular, with Villa obligingly pushing up to halfway, and Reguilon being sufficiently quick of thought to pop the ball into the resultant wide open spaces, Sonny’s pace was a threat and bore suitable rewards. The winning goal emanated from his size nines, and we really ought to have had one or two more from this route.

Sonny can also take his fair share of applause for one of the more entertaining three-minute segments seen in N17 in recent history, when he, Lo Celso and Hojbjerg between them drove the surrounding Villa players to the brink of breakdown by successfully keeping the ball in the corner. This is a tactic of which AANP has never been a particular fan, primarily because it rarely seems to work, the ball typically being surrendered within about five seconds and a race ensuing as the opposition counters.

Today, however, our lot played the situation to perfection, and to pretty hilarious effect. The highlight of the routine was arguably delivered by Sonny himself, in wriggling free from all manner of flailing limbs near the corner flag, buzzing into the area, creating room for a shot – and then u-turning and buzzing back out towards the corner flag again, irate Villa players flailing in his wake. A comical appendix to what was a much-improved display, and Our Glorious Leader can breathe a little easier for a couple of weeks.

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Spurs 5-1 Mura: Four Tottenham Talking Points

1. Dele

Having been hooked at half time against Woolwich, Dele might have tried to convince himself that it was no big deal. Right person, wrong place. Conservation of his energies. In essence, the general sentiment that such things happen and everything was alright.

However, one imagines him raising an eyebrow or two on being told that he would be part of what was essentially the second-string for last night’s bash; and then, even at his most optimistic, his internal spin doctor would have had a heck of a task in making the case that his removal last night, as part of the operation to up the ante and inject life into a fairly moribund all-round day out, was anything other than a damning indictment of his contributions.

Make no mistake, all is not well at Casa Dele. Now those in the Pro-Dele camp would no doubt spring into life at this point, to hammer home the point that not only did he convert the early penalty, but he also won it, with some very welcome sprightliness in the opposition area. (And goodness knows, that early goal was to be welcomed, because if he we had made it even to the half-hour mark at nil-nil the natives’ restlessness would have been a thing to behold.)

It is true that Dele applied himself with at least the minimal level of diligence, generally looking to adopt suitable positions around Reguilon and Gil that would create useful triangles. This in itself was vastly preferable to the attitudes gaily advertised by one and all in recent weeks, of slumped shoulders and little concern for such things as breaking into a meaningful jog.

Nevertheless, Dele’s on-ball contributions were a thing of concern. Primarily troubling was his now long-standing tendency to dwell on the ball for far too long before shuttling it onwards.

Compare and contrast with young Skipp. Some might say Skipp is a soul of more limited technique and passing abilities, others would disagree; but what is crucial about Skipp in this story is that when he receives the ball his first instinct always seems to be immediately give it to someone else. And in a sense, this is every bit as valuable as beating a man, as it still forces the opponent at least to change his body position if not pick up his bags and toddle off to a whole new spot of land. All because he plays the ball quickly.

Dele, on the other hand, insists on treating the ball as if his own personal plaything, to be dwelt upon for at least four or five touches before any further action is even considered (and as often as not that further action tends to be an attempted nutmeg, with mixed results). The opposition have time to saunter back into position, and whatever momentum there once was is allowed gently to drift into the ether. And moreover, at the end of these ball-based soliloquys of his, Dele’s eventual pass tend to be as often awry as on the nose.

Little wonder then that his recent appearances have ended prematurely and in ignominy, and this particular brand of rot does not bode so well for his short-term prospects either.

If it’s a Number 10 we’re after, then any of Ndombele, Lo Celso or Lucas seem better equipped at present. And if the idea is to play him in this new-fangled central midfield role then he might need to head back to the library and double-down on his homework, because it’s not a subject he has yet come close to mastering.

2. The Change in Formation (4-2-3-1)

Our Glorious Leader appeared yet again to give the formation a pretty forceful yank, dispensing with either the ultra-defensive 4-3-3 so negatively deployed against Palace or the little too front-footed 4-3-3 so bizarrely deployed against Woolwich; and opting instead for 4-2-3-1, with Skipp and Winks sitting relatively deeply.

Now it’s not so much a caveat as an enormous, neon-lit sign in the largest font imaginable, but the opposition were fairly clueless throughout, making it pretty pointless to draw too many conclusions on the value or otherwise of the 4-2-3-1. (Some might claim that the opposition came back into it after half-time, I disagree – their goal was a speculative hit, they didn’t manage another shot on target, and could hardly be said to have laid siege to our goal or overrun us at any point.)

So while the jury is out on the efficacy or otherwise of the 4-2-3-1, what nevertheless did provide a warming sense of reassurance was the notion that there was at least in place a dedicated formation. This might not sound like much, but one week on and I am still trying to compute precisely what formation and strategy was being adopted against Woolwich; so to see in place a nice, clear formation, with little room for confusion, was oddly comforting.

3. The Cavalry

As mentioned above, the withdrawal of Dele simply in order to inject life into proceedings was rather embarrassing for all concerned. While, as also mentioned above, it was hardly the case that we were being overrun, we were certainly rather flat in all we did, and the immediate, positive change in energy levels could not have been more obvious if it had been introduced with fanfare and that American chap who screeches into a mic before boxing matches.

Sonny and Kane were immediately on the money, Sonny buzzing and Kane picking good positions; and bless his cotton socks young Lucas this season looks very much like someone enjoying life, confidence oozing and adventurous gambits pouring forth.

Kane remains a rotter in the eyes of AANP, but stick him in and around the area and he certainly finishes well, and as much as the increased zest and enhanced scoreline, it was pretty satisfying to see three such excellently-crafted goals.

Something of a shame that we had to resort to such things, and dashed frustrating for young Scarlett again to be reduced to fighting for the occasional scrap, but after the dreadful mess being peddled in recent weeks it was simply fun to sit back and watch us play thirty minutes of incisive, attacking football.

4. Lo Celso

Like several of his chums, a couple of years on from his arrival Lo Celso remains a pretty impenetrable sort of fish, one never really being sure where he should be or what he should do.

And for an hour yesterday, he was as bafflingly enigmatic as ever. On the one hand his goal was well taken and he busied himself reasonably well; on t’other he, in common with a few others, failed to dictate the game as one would have hoped against fairly limited opponents.

However, once the aforementioned cavalry rolled into town, things changed. From my vantage point, and in my advanced years, I confess to have been unable to register the exact contortions on the GLC face, but one can only imagine that it lit up with childlike joy once Kane, Son and Lucas bounced on and he himself was invited onto the Number 10 roster. From that hallowed pedestal he suddenly clicked into gear like nobody’s business, appearing to have an absolute whale of a time, in a manner that one imagines would have had Dele spraying curses around the place.

While a couple of young Gil’s touches were gorgeous to behold, the much-vaunted AANP Touch of the Match award is winging its way to Lo Celso Towers for the glorious first-time flick into the path of Sonny, in assisting one of Kane’s goals. You know the one.

Lo Celso’s pass for the fifth was arguably as good and probably more difficult, a nutmegged, reverse pass onto a plate for Kane. I feel legally obliged to wave around once more that neon-lit caveat about the opposition, but nevertheless it was an impressive demonstration from the fellow of what he can do in that position. Which, bizarrely enough after three successive league hammerings, gives Nuno a pretty welcome selection dilemma ahead of Sunday – Lucas, Lo Celso or Ndombele (or, please no, Dele) in the Number 10 role?

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Arsenal 3-1 Spurs: Four Tottenham Talking Points

1. Dele

Having lost 3-0 at Palace a couple of weeks ago, and then lost 3-0 at home to Chelsea last week, you might have thought that the familiarity of it all would lessen the blow, and that the response at AANP Towers to yet again going 3-0 down this evening would be to welcome the deficit like an old friend, slapping it on the back and inviting it in for a generous whiskey and a chat about the old times. Not so; in fact, the response at AANP Towers was to damn with a good deal of heartiness the act of going three-nil down and all those involved in its construction.

The vague flutter of life in the final ten minutes did little to disguise that this was as rotten a performance as they come, and gazing with horror at the ruins I did feel like one of those FBI chaps on the telly-box who stares at several dismembered bodies wondering where to begin; but luckily the evidence points to no shortage of culprits, and one of the foremost amongst them is Dele.

Last week, after the dismal second half against Chelsea, I wondered aloud what it is that Dele actually does; and this week, after the dismal first half against Woolwich left me wondering what it is that Dele actually does, sharp as a tack I went a step further and started to ask myself whether some sort of theme was emerging.

Much can be said about the tactical set-up, our 4-3-3 strongly avoiding the offering of either one thing (attack) or another (defence), but as Messrs Ndombele, Hojbjerg and Skipp demonstrated at least in fits and starts, even within this ill-fitting system one can still roll up the sleeves and try to make the best of things.

Dele, however, simply disappeared from sight as soon as proceedings were formally launched. The front six in general seemed determined that their ‘press’ was going to be nominal only, with as few drops of perspiration expended towards this exercise as possible, so I probably ought not to single out the chap for blame in that respect. But if a memo had done the rounds at HQ instructing the midfield sorts to contribute to matters in possession, or avail themselves when it seemed we might have an exploratory wander toward goal, Dele evidently was not privy to such communication.

Nor is this the first game in which he’s drifted in and out of existence. This midfield berth does not suit the lad, and while it might fit an occasional media narrative to suggest that he’s been reinvented as a box-to-box midfielder, the AANP response is to groan a particularly exasperated one and urge whomever the hell is responsible for such things either to shove him up in that role supporting Kane, à la the prime years under Poch, or get him out of the team and pick someone else better suited to whatever system it is we’re trying to peddle.

2. Ndombele

Visitors to social media who are particularly adept at scouring the nooks and crannies might have noted a rare Tweet from the AANP thumbs and forefingers this week, as, continuing that theme of wondering aloud, I put to the world that this Hotspur XI is big enough only for one of Dele or Ndombele; but, crucially, not both.

The rationale being as follows: neither seem to have the required puff in their cheeks or fire in their bellies to knuckle down and put in a solid, non-stop shift of defensive duties.

Now, in a sense, one might ask why the hell should they? And this would be a pretty reasonable retort. After all, one doesn’t ask Hugo to poach goals in the opposition six-yard box. Neither Dele nor Ndombele are the sorts constructed by Mother Nature to spend their days tracking back and winning tackles, so, the argument continues, excuse them from such such rigours as required by a 4-3-3. Both of these are attack-minded souls, so let them attack.

In a sense this is acceptable enough; but it does seem to have the consequence that only one or t’other should be deployed at any given time, as we really don’t have room to let allow one chap after another to be excused from the muckier lines of work. And whichever of these two get the nod really ought to be the attacking fulcrum, the sort of nib through whom all our creative energies through flow.

Frankly, at the moment – and this is a moment now stretching to about a season and a half – Dele is not that attacking fulcrum. As mentioned above, I rather think he ought to be stationed in a supporting role to Kane or not at all.

Ndombele, on the other hand, does like to toss around tantalising hints of being the sort of egg who could make things happen. Oddly, within the disastrous first half, Ndombele somehow managed to engineer the status of ‘Being Fairly Heavily Involved’. These things are relative, of course (his other ten chums being dotted around the place for decorative value only), and contextual (he was involved to the extent that he seemed to attract the ball a fair amount, but make no mistake – all the bright sparks were flying in opposition colours).

Nevertheless, somehow he seemed to be on the ball rather a lot of the ball in the first half. It was all fairly frustrating content, alas, as he simply seemed to poke his head down various cul de sacs before stroking the ball sideways; but at least, unlike Dele, he seemed to be present on the pitch on some physical level. It seemed we were at least graced with someone who was happy enough to take a look at the problem, even if he were slap bang out of workable solutions.

This was certainly not Ndombele’s greatest day, and let’s face it, after two and a bit years I’m not sure how much patience is left in the tank as we wait for his great days to stream forth; but if we are going to pick a fellow in the centre through whom we want attacking operations to be conducted, I would prefer it to be Ndombele than Dele; and given the shortcomings of both on the defensive side of things, I am convinced that we cannot accommodate both (other than against the very weakest sorts).

3. Skipp

On a brighter note, young Skipp took the opportunity of his introduction to remind his more esteemed comrades that a touch of commitment and gusto is still allowed.

Hot on the heels of a couple of crunching midweek tackles on Adama Traore of all people, Skipp did not wait too long before delivering what is fast becoming his trademark, full-body sliding challenge. Indeed, this is one of the few games I have witnessed in which one of the highlights has been to see one of our number pick up a caution, but I applauded the young bean for picking up his, if only because it seemed to suggest that at least someone in lilywhite gave the slightest damn about things.

All of which makes Skipp’s omission from the starting line-up a little bit of a head-scratcher. Wisdom after the event, of course, is a rather irritating trait, so I won’t make a production of this – but I doubt I was alone in wondering at kick-off about the strategic value of picking a midfield heavy on Deles, Ndombeles and Hojbjergs, and decidedly light on Skipps. For this game of all games – against that lot, and in front of their fans – it seemed about as uncontroversial a call as they come to have included from the off the one chap whose eyes light up at the thought of flying in amongst the limbs.

One hardly questions Nuno’s tenure as boss, but a third successive hammering suggests that the time in which he earns his weekly envelope is upon us, and his calls to date have been odd. The strategy has changed each week; 4-3-3 seems ill-fitting; and now the choice of personnel – in picking both Dele and Ndombele, and leaving out Skipp – do little to suggest that here is a General whose plans are fully formed and expertly constructed.

4. Gil

As a final, damning indictment upon those who should know better, the other bright spark from within our regiment came from young Gil, a lad who still looks like he ought to be in bed by 8.

Having been kept on a firm leash during his losing-cause-cameo last week, he had a bit more joy in the l-c-c this time around. Admittedly his end-product missed as much as it hit, but he gave his opponent plenty about which to ponder, and generally scuttled around the place with an energy and willing that, one is disappointed to report, looked pretty out of place compared to his moping, half-hearted seniors.

I was particularly impressed with his energy and speed of thought in sliding in to set up Reguilon, for Son’s goal, a touch that went rather under the radar on the telly-box, but which turned out to be a decidedly nifty pass from a pretty unforgiving starting point.

Had the deflected effort from Lucas (another who at least showed a few glimpses of willing) looped in at the death we might have had an entertaining final minute or two; but this was a defeat absolutely deserved, and I don’t mind suggesting that the whole lot of them ought now to be subjected to some form of brutish public humiliation.

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Spurs 0-3 Chelsea: Four Tottenham Talking Points

1. RIP Jimmy Greaves

Although too young to have seen him myself, the recollections of my old man, AANP Senior – a man so hard to impress that even the win over Real Madrid a few years back left him commenting gruffly that we should have scored more – are telling. Mention Greaves, and his eyes light up with a rarely-seen, almost childlike excitement, as he describes countless goals scored almost casually, assuring me that there simply was never a goalscorer as good as him.

It’s a claim supported by the numbers, which are so easy to take for granted, but on inspection almost defy belief.

While Dad had the privilege of seeing him week in, week out in the flesh (and meeting him outside the ground on one occasion), and I suspect is not alone in citing him as his all-time favourite player, for a generation of us we knew him through Saturday lunchtime television. Hard then to picture him as a goalscorer extraordinaire, but easy to love him as a personality.

A true Tottenham legend, our greatest goalscorer, arguably the greatest goalscorer of them all. Rest in peace, Jimmy Greaves.

2. First Half Positives

And so to the match itself. By the time the curtain came down we onlookers were slumped in our seats, the players were slumped in their spots and our lot as a collective had slumped a little further down the table – it was a pretty strong evening for slumping all round.

And what makes the whole thing taste that much more bitter is that in the early knockings we had gone about things with such bright-eyed and bushy-tailed vigour and purpose.

Given the way things have panned out in recent games I had approached yesterday’s fixture with all the optimism of one of those early Christians being tossed into a den of lions in front of a baying mob. What with our lot unable to muster more than about one shot per game for love nor money, and Chelsea teeming with Tuchels and Kantes and now even Lukakus, it was with a pretty heavy heart that I took my seat and peeled back my hands from over my eyes.

Yet, as mentioned, we came absolutely haring out of the traps.

Nuno sprang a bit of a surprise, both with his team selection and tactics. The return of Sonny obviously helped us look a tad more threatening at the north end of the pitch, while the deployment of Ndombele for Skipp seemed oddly adventurous for a head honcho who had only last weekend reacted to being top of the league by picking three holding midfielders. However, there we were, Ndobmele’s midweek escapades rewarded with a starting berth, and while I suppose some of the more cautious amongst us might have raised a tentative hand and wondered about defensive cover, it appeared that our heroes were being sent to battle with exhortations to attack ringing in their ears.

It so nearly worked, too, dash it all. Kane, Lo Celso and Sonny duly attached themselves each to a Chelsea centre-back, the press was high and the passing often zippy. Indeed, this zippiness of pass owed much to the fact that those not in possession were humming around busily and stationing themselves usefully to become available for a pass. The intensity matched that which we showed against Man City, with Chelsea’s attempts to pass out from the back proving particularly fertile ground for our press, and in short all was right with the world – except that we couldn’t stick the dashed ball into the dashed net.

And while it sounds obvious, that having been well established as the point of the exercise since the game was invented, it created one heck of a problem. No need to delve into too much gory detail as I suppose, as everyone saw what happened next – half-time, Kante, and so on and so forth – but the game-plan, well though it worked, really needed us to take an early lead in order that we might progress to Stage 2, as it were, and cling on to the lead while offering a countering threat.

Instead, in the blink of a second half eye we were two behind, with every last ounce of puff exerted and little clue how to break down a Chelsea defence that were smoking cigars in between the occasional victory in their own personal duals.

While there is much to chide about the second half, both in terms of individuals and the collective, AANP is prepared to break with tradition and just this once look on the bright side of a 3-0 hammering at home. For while the energy levels dropped to zero and the team simply ran out of ideas, the first half – or at least first half hour – gave a hint of the tactical nous and game-plan that might serve us a little better against weaker opponents. While one would not expect the exact tactic (of our front three essentially marking the opposition’s back three) every game, the high press and speed of passing was encouraging.

The chronology of things may have left a bad taste in the mouth, but the positives of the first half hour ought not to be dismissed out of hand.

3. Dele, Lo Celso and Ndombele

That said, nor should what followed be ignored. I don’t attach too much blame for either goal conceded (which I suppose is a tad generous on the opener, as headed goals from corners are eminently preventable), but tactically our lot appeared to consider that the best way to deal with Chelsea was to scratch heads and chase the occasional shadow; and moreover the attitude, from those paid handsomely to stretch every sinew for 90-odd minutes, was pretty half-baked.

Now the above stinging tribute is aimed at most of those on show (Monsieur Lloris perhaps exonerated, Hojbjerg similarly and young Skipp also at least having the dignity to upend a few blue-clad bodies when he was introduced). So when I zoom in on Dele, Lo Celso and Ndombele I want to make clear to my public that this is not to say, by extension, that those others in attendance could walk off with heads held high and breasts swelling with pride.

But Dele, Le Celso and Ndombele seem to attract the spotlight as much because it is hard to fathom what the devil they are supposed to be doing.

Ndombele at least appeared to start proceedings where he had left off in midweek, with the ball attached to his foot as if with string, and the capacity to mesmerise still burning bright within him.

So far, so good, and in fact all three of the above contributed to the first half promise, in their own specific ways. Dele popped up to assist both in defence and moving forward; Lo Celso stuck to his pressing role; Ndombele popped the ball about as required.

But when the leaks started to spring in the second half, none of this lot seemed to do much about it. In fact, they all rather disappeared from view, until reality caught up with perception and Ndombele and Lo Celso were officially removed from proceedings.

And while I suppose there are mitigating circumstances, not least in the fact that Our Glorious Leader has yet to imprint upon the collective an obvious signature style, this will have to go down as yet another game in which I ask of both Lo Celso and Ndombele, “What the devil are they supposed to do?”

Both seem shiny and expensive, and obviously come complete with a whole range of bells and whistles – but what are their optimal positions? Where and how do they best contribute? And, without wanting to revisit the heady days of my philosophy degree – what is their purpose? Both have been wandering the corridors of White Hart Lane for a few years now, and yet I’m not sure any amongst us are any the wiser as to how to use them. It’s pretty frustrating stuff, as both are clearly possessed of decent wedges of talent, but at present they just seem to roll around on the pitch, not quite contributing anything like as much as they ought.

On a vaguely similar note, I’m not hugely convinced about Dele’s supposed reimagining as a central midfielder. He trots around dutifully crossing t’s and dotting the occasional i, but there is still a lot about him of the square peg trying to adapt to a round hole. He is and always was best gliding surreptitiously into the box to nosey around and pick up goals. Putting the onus on him to track back and defend only seems to encourage him to concede free-kicks in dangerous areas; similarly, watching him take all day to pick a pass in midfield does make me occasionally yank at a clump of hair from my scalp.

4. Gil

And briefly, it drifted a little under the radar, but this gave us a first proper eyeing of young Gil at Premier League level, as he was given half an hour or so to work up a sweat.

While one does not pass judgement on half an hour against the current European Champions and quite possibly future Title-winners, there was precious little about the young tick to cause even a slither of excitement. I cannot quite remember how much on top of Lamela we paid for his services, and no doubt the deal was made with an eye on the future – but in the here and now I must confess to watching him and a little wistfully wishing that we could have brought on Lamela instead.

At one point Gil was simply shrugged out of the way by Rudiger like a cat swatting aside a passing rodent, and while in time he will presumably sink a steak or two, it was hardly the game-changing impact for which we were looking.

Nor did Gil do anything at all with the ball at his feet that suggested he might prompt a wrinkle or two to appear across a Chelsea forward.

Brighter days will undoubtedly come, but to finish a game like this wishing we hadn’t sold Lamela seemed a suitably damning conclusion.