..plumb.
Just when you thought recent results were bad enough along comes one of the league’s bottom teams, West Brom, to beat Spurs at home.
Saying West Brom beat Spurs at home doesn’t even do justice to this new depth of ineptitude, it was a faultless display of uselessness from top to bottom – bar of course the one man who saves Spurs many blushes, Hugo Lloris.
Saying that a couple of players weren’t as bad as some made out but bizarrely both were substituted as Pochettino joined in the omnishambles. Though of course he did start it, with again Adebayor named in the starting XI. Not the only thing he’s got wrong this week after the announcement of Kaboul as captain and the aforementioned player as vice-captain.
Club captain tends to be more a ceremonial title for a long standing player at a club who is barely going to see any on field action, especially not in the starting eleven.With Vertonghen and Fazio available the bench is surely where Kaboul is going to be doing all his captaincy from.
While Adebayor to take the armband when Kaboul is absent is beyond a joke. This match showed what real captaincy material he is as he lazily wandered around, so bloody lazily that he never even managed to be offside – which has got to be a first – never really went for any chance that came his way, never tried to make anything from anything and couldn’t even be arsed to make his passes fifty-fifty – success rate of 46% from his 13 attempted passes.
All afternoon he played in the pocket of Joleon Lescott. Yes that Joleon Lescott. While also being very lucky not to give away what was a blatant penalty for handball.
Lescott could have opened the scoring but his pile driver of a shot was blocked by his own player. So in one move Lescott amassed the same number of on target shots as 14 Spurs’ players did in 90 minutes plus added time.
That shot came from Soldado who had to wait and hour before being introduced, even with Adebayor stinking up the place. He stilled stayed on though. It was another strange move by the manager. All through the game Spurs’ passing had been off, yet the two players with the most accurate passing on the day of the front six were removed – Chadli and Dembele.
There was no cohesion, no guile, no craft and very little graft. Everything that was present in the performance away to Sunderland was gone. Now this normally happens on the Sunday after a Thursday night Europa League game but with all the outfield players changed from that game where is the excuse? Hell if you’re going to lose at home to West Brom you might as well have gone for it in the Europa. Better chance of CF qualification than if you carry on like this in the league.
At least Pochettino didn’t sugar coat it he knew this was rubbish he was watching – I am angry or disappointed – I don’t know the best word to show my feelings. We had a bad day
– we know from his reactions during the game his thoughts on what was being served up, he showed his feelings.
This was West Brom after all, hadn’t won at the Lane in 30 years, were second from bottom in the league, just kept off bottom by a better goal difference, just scraped stayed in the Premier last season, had scored 2 whole goals in their previous 4 league outings.
Can Pochettino get his players playing like those at Southampton? Maybe but surely he’ll have to play his best players first. It’s no good trying to get a Lambert performance out of Adebayor. One has grafted his way up the game and is willing to graft once he’s got there. The other has had it handed to him at great expense and couldn’t give a crap. Good or bad, still picking up the wage.
The other forward players you feel can make it work, the likes of Lamela, Chadli, Eriksen, Dembele, Stambouli, Capoue.
Then pick a defence you can trust. Then hope that ENIC sell up and the new owners are willing to back a manager with more than broken promises. While hoping the others have their off days like Everton, Liverpool and ManUre did at the weekend.