That second half was just putrid. Every header was won by a Chelsea player, every pressing move was executed by a Chelsea player, and every 50-50 fell to a Chelsea player. Our fight, our passion, our heart....everything was gone.
The defining picture of this defeat was the shot of Antonio Conte passionately shouting, cajoling, instructing, gesticulating wildly on the touchline with his team already in the ascendancy...while the man who speaks of nothing but 'passion' in 'futbol' stood there in the foreground, hands in his pockets, cheeks puffed out, silently watching his limp team lose more and more ground in a second half which was all Chelsea's.
And who has more to prove, more to do to build his reputation as a leader of men? Antonio Conte, who has won title after title with Juventus, trophy after trophy, a glittering career already behind him....or Mauricio Pochettino, a man who has won nothing whatsoever, not even a worthless Milk Cup, in his time as a manager? Who has the more cajoling and energizing to do, a man with a team filled with experienced, title-winning players? Or a man with a young team lost and defeated well before the final whistle, looking for some inspiration from anywhere? Who has the more tinkering to do, a man with his side in the lead at home or a man watching his team limply lose every tactical fight of note?
Who has more to do to drag his team to victory?
And yet, who did more?
People will say that there's no point to Conte's gesticulating, that Poch doing it would have been worthless. You couldn't be more wrong. When a team is like ours, spineless and limp, the most useless move of passion and energy assumes a symbolic significance out of all proportion with the mood. A wild tackle made by a slight player on a relative giant, knowing he wouldn't win the ball but desperate to try anyway. A burst down the middle, taking on one, two, three players, trying as hard as possible to fight against the inevitable. A thundering header out, followed by an exhortation to shape up - because it's not over yet.
A manager, shouting and raising hell on the touchline, trying anything to spark some life out of his dejected, surrendering players.
These things have meaning on days like today. Days when it is revealed just how limp our pretensions are. We thought we'd give them a fight, and we did - for one half. We thought we'd give them a game,and we did - for one half. We thought we had a reasonably strong side that could cope with injuries, and we did - for one half.
We thought our lads would show spine and heart, and they did - for one half.
Mauricio Pochettino thought he would be clever and rotate players in the CL, regardless of the limp defeat there, so that we could compete with Chelsea on the weekend, and it worked - for one half.
And then it all collapsed, and it is revealed how far we have to go and how many flaws riddle our squad and our coach.
The unbeaten run is gone - and let's be honest, it was coming, even as we won against Spam. We surrendered it as meekly as possible in that second half. So now we have little to delude ourselves with in terms of our level, and where we really are after seemingly deliberately crashing out of the CL with disgusting glee.
And again, Stamford Bridge remains our bane, a bane Poch has no hope of breaking for yet another season. And I hope that people now understand how monumental it was for Andre Villas-Boas to break our similar hoodoo at Old f*cking Trafford, against a legendary coach in Sir Alex Ferguson - it's a profoundly difficult feat to get mentally weak Tottenham Hotspur to ever break a hoodoo of any sort, and he did it. I hope people understand how magnificent it was when Harry did the same in the most dramatic of ways at the Emirates in 2010-2011 - to not only win, but to come from behind and do it, was breathtaking, a real watershed moment.
Those are the moments that define our evolution as a team - the crossing of those mental Rubicons which Spurs harbor more persistently than any other team. Mentally, we have always been weak - it is the coaches that help us transcend that weakness that are remembered. At Stamford Bridge, Poch has received a lesson in how difficult it remains to break those hurdles.
He'll come out in the post-match presser and talk about how we showed quality and had chances and could have drawn or won or whatever, but the truth is, we gave the second half to Chelsea, and we deserved nothing on the back of that fact. And that is scarier to me than a surrender from the start would have been, because I can't conceive how he could take a team which had fought so admirably for the first half and turn it into the spineless ghost which hovered on the field for the second. He had it half right, and he turned it wrong. And I won't take any excuses about fitness or energy, because he *deliberately* rested players against Monaco, and he *deliberately* left out a perfectly fit player in Sissoko for no f*cking reason.
Mauricio Pochettino failed today, as he failed in the cups against Monaco and against Liverpool. In terms of the league, this is his first failure of the season. And unlike in previous seasons, he cannot claim a lack of backing in the market this time around, so that makes it doubly damning.
Disappointing. Bitterly disappointing. And I expect much, much better from him than this. He has no excuses for it.
