mercies.
After Spurs’ last few outings a point away to the South London scum of ARSEnal shouldn’t be sniffed at.
Truth be told it’s them that should be worried, if you are can’t beat a team, containing Naughton, Rose and Adebayor, that was outplayed in a loss to West Brom at your home with all the ball then you’re in some sort of trouble.
It was another Spurs game where you wonder what is going off out there. Are the coached to play like this or are they just playing their own way. Well when I say playing I mean meandering about. Because generally that’s what most of them did for most of the game. One bit of pressing play brought about the goal, but bar that they just for the most part stood off the opposition when they had possession.
It’s not the first time and it doesn’t quite add up.
Pochettino can’t really be relying on Lloris to make save after save and hope that at least one of the defenders turns up turned on. This game Kaboul filled that role, maybe some of the criticism of his recent dozy displays has got through or the pressure of those available has given the captain the kick up the arse required. He was blocking and cutting out nearly everything.
As Lloris attested to a bit back when the goalkeeper is your man of the match it doesn’t look good. And he certainly was with a string of world class saves that cements his place as certainly the best ‘keeper in the league but also up there with Neuer on the world stage.
The manager provided a couple of shocks in the starting line-up with three changes. Mason started after his mid-week League Cup scoring cameo in the middle while he restored Naughton to the starting XI – where he had played in the first league game of the season and so wasn’t as the clown on Match of the Day commentated his league debut.
This meant we were denied the most glorious pass in football, Bentaleb sideways to Naughton or is it Naughton sideways to Bentaleb.
Mason while not being that outstanding was still an upgrade from the Algerian love child of Tim Sherwood. Mason actually looked forward and even moved forward. Though of course when I mentioned he’d been more forward a player he produced a number of Bentaleb style sideways and backwards passes. The kind of balls that managers should fine players for.
But on the whole he was a positive addition. Though you can’t get too excited, after all Townsend bounced around for a few years on loan before breaking in and looked good for a couple of weeks.
Naughton, I heard and read some praise him but while Lamela will get most of the blame for the equaliser from his sliced clearance, Naughton should take a lot of the blame. It really started with his ineptness trying to shield a ball into touch for about 10 yards.
He also stifled every forward move in which he was involved. Acres of space in front of you, why not stop and let the defenders get back, panic and pass it back?
That actually seemed the game plan throughout. If you’re going to play the counter attacking game you actually have to attack. This needless stopping, Parker pirouette and back pass will get you nowhere and it didn’t bar one scuffed Chadli shot.
Pacey counter attacking also requires a striker who isn’t the laziest streak of piss about. At some point Pochettino is going to have to figure out Adebayor needs binned. Unless of course he already has but it’s someone else picking him. After all AVB was pretty much sacked for not playing a player he’d well and truly, correctly, summed up as a waste of space.
While Adebayor is proving most people right, Chadli is proving most of them wrong with his goal scoring. Just a shame he can’t prove the FA wrong over his yellow card for cupping his hand to his ear in celebration. Funny that certain other players get away with it. But then the FA would have to admit they have a group of officials that are just not up to the job.
So it’s a point but a poor performance and the standard drop deep when in the lead and give up a soft equaliser. But things just don’t seem to gel with the team.