I thought we were trying to be solid yesterday and stay in the game. For the first few minutes, it looked like the players were adjusting to the setup, but after that, we looked quite comfortable. That was the first half....
2nd half, well we have an error from Vertonghen that gifts them an opener and their first shot on target to boot. But the concern is how we react as a group when we goal a goal down and encounter a setback. The reaction needed to be to keep it tight and keep it at 1-0, no more silly errors, and play some percentage football for 15 minutes to regain a foothold in the game. Then we could gradually get our way back into it and possibly rally late and nick an equaliser. A 1-1 draw and we'd have been happy.
Instead, we go 1-0 down and heads drop. We don't tighten up, we get sloppier, we try and play faster and we make more mistakes. End up getting a soft penalty given against us, but we shouldn't be allowing the ball into such an area, so easily, soon after letting in the first goal.
At that point, it's 2-0 and a red, and we know the game is finished. But where is the pride? Why don't we react by saying "We've been hammered a few times this season, let's shut these c//ts out for the rest of the game and not let in more than 2." At least the players and management could take something from that. Instead, we just fold, with mistakes on top of mistakes.
How do you cure it? I'm not sure. We need players that play hard for the manager and the club, rather than ones who have an eye on the exit. Some players play well even if they know they'd rather be elsewhere (Bale, Suarez at Liverpool, Modric for us). But we have a few players (not in that class by the way) who are phoning it in at the minute. And there looks to be a few more who seem disillusioned with it all.
That's not acceptable. Playing for the shirt is a cliche, but these players should be earning their right to play in our team. We have a decent player like Livermore out on loan who may not have the talent of Dembele/Paulinho, but wouldn't have done any worse than them this season. We've seen Bentaleb come in at 19 years old and take more responsibility in games than any midfielders we have recently signed.
We'd be better off building our team around decent players who want to be here, primarily ones who either signed young and developed with us, or ones who came all the way through our youth ranks. We can add a little bit of star quality to that, for a bit of fleeting glory until they move on. What we seem to have now is too many players with an eye on the exit, and not enough who really want to be making their way at Spurs. Mercenaries work if they are the A-Team, but we can't sign those players coz they go to the likes of Chelsea, City etc.
