Feeling bitter. annoyed and depressed with this CL final defeat ! It is not easy to accept losing any Cup final, let alone our first ever CL final ! It is going to mentally affect us for years to come ! This is typical Spurs ! When you put too much hope on them to do well, they will always let you down ! After the way we beat Emirates Marketing Project and Ajax to be in the Final, really thought we were going to win the CL ! We could have made history by winning our first CL and become the European Champions. Instead we didn't turn up and played poorly for most of the match. We only played well for the first and last 10-15 minutes of the match and didn't look like scoring. It was annoying to concede another early goal via the penalty which proved costly to us. It was a soft penalty but Sissoko was stupid to raise his arms like that.
Pochettino has to take large part of the blame for playing the wrong team. Kane should not have started this match while Moura should have started. Kane has been in poor form even before his injury and he looked poor and rusty again. It was really harsh to drop Moura who had scored the brilliant hattrick against Ajax. Our attack looked toothless and all our shots were direct the the goalie. Pochettino should have at least bring on Moura at the start the of the second half instead of waiting until the 65th minute. Alli, Eriksen and Son had another poor match. Eriksen really should have done better with the freekick late in the match. We should have started with Lamela or at least bring him on as substitute in the second half. Lamela would have lifted the team. Instead found it annoying Pochettino bought on Dier and Llorente. It has been proven many times that Llorente cannot work with Kane but Pochettino still did the same mistake.
Our midfield was a let down. Sissoko not only conceded the stupid penalty early in the match but he also had a poor match. Winks worked hard but I think we should have started with the experienced Wanyama. I think Wanyama would have helped to win the ball more than Winks. Not sure why Pochettino bought on Dier for Sissoko when we badly needed the goal in the second half. For some reason, Pochettino always bring on a defensive minded player when we are looking for a goal. Dier is always error-prone and it was his mis header which caused us conceding the second goal. This is where we badly missed Dembele ! I think Dembele would have helped us to win this match.
Our defence have been poor this season and it came back to affect us. The first goal was a soft penalty but we really should have done better with the second goal. It was Dier's mis header which caused panic but Vertonghen and then Alderweireld should have done better to clear it. They looked too casual with the defending that time. Rose was probably our best player but he gave away the unnecessary corner from which they scored the second goal. Both the goals came from Trippier's position so he has to take part of the blame for the goals. Lloris had nothing much to do the whole match but wish he had saved the penalty. After all, Lloris had saved his previous 3 penalties for us.
Losing in any Cup final is really hard to accept. It would have been easier to accept if we had lost to Emirates Marketing Project in the quarter final or Ajax in the semi final. It was a glorious chance to win the CL but we have wasted it. Not sure when or if we will be in another CL Final. With this defeat, we have now wasted our last chance to win a trophy this decade (2010-2019) ! This means, for the first time since the 1940s, we have gone an entire decade without a trophy ! We have also lost our last 3 Cup finals and 4 of our last 5 Cup finals ! It is no coincidence that these 4 Cup final defeats came after Levy became the chairman in 2001. Before that, we had won 13 of our 16 Cup Finals, losing only 3. The main reason for our poor Cup final record under Levy is that almost all the managers he appointed, including Pochettino, are young and inexperienced ! The only exception was AVB and Ramos who duly won us the League Cup in 2008. Ramos is a legend for winning us that trophy which looks like will be our only trophy for some years to come !
