Sigh. Not a bad performance, but once again, our defense lets us down - once again, our midfield is outnumbered, and once again, Hugo Lloris and Son Heung-Min, once stalwarts, have proven liabilities.
One, maybe we can carry. Two of those, no way. Three of those, you are asking to be spanked, and we were in the end.
Conte's miraculous overperformance last year was built on a few players playing to their levels or overperforming, dragging up the useless wastes of space on our team behind them. Bentancur, Kulusevski, Son, Lloris, Kane, Romero, Dier, dragging up the crap like Sanchez, Davies, Sess et al.
- Bentancur has been injured.
- Kulu has been injured.
- Son has become a useless waste of a spot, a pub player, but still keeps being played for some bizarre reason that only Conte knows.
- Lloris - see above.
- Romero - injured.
- Dier - reverted to his default of being a lumbering waste of space.
- Kane - only one performing to expectations.
A well-built system can carry a few underperformers, but Conte's 3-4-3 is not a well-built system - unless everyone is playing above par, it exposes absolutely everyone to immense amounts of pressure. Combine that with the collapse in form and it isn't hard to see why we are crumbling as miserably as this.
Is Conte to blame alone? No. In our previous window, we needed a top-class RWB and LCB and gave Conte a Champo bargain bin in Djed Spence and a cheap loan duffer in Clement Lenglet. Both of those have come back to haunt us. And we haven't learned brick, because we are two-thirds of the way through this window, and nothing has happened, as usual.
I think we're seeing the end of another manager, and it saddens me that this set of wasters in Spurs shirts will succeed in getting another one out. But truth be told, blame is shared on all sides - and this circus will go on and on and on until we get new owners.