The Song Remains The Same

"Nothing is certain except death and taxes" wrote Benjamin Franklin back in 1789. Had Mr Franklin been around two hundred and thirty five years later he could have been forgiven for making a couple of additions. Firstly, you'd have to include 'conflict in the Middle East' which in one form or another has been going on for my entire lifetime and for ages before that but more relevant to this post would be ' Tottenham Hotspur will always find new and entertaining ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory'.

Johnson scores for the 6th consecutive game.

It had all started so well. Ange named the same starting line up that had wiped the floor with Manchester United the previous weekend. Spurs set off out of the blocks like Usain Bolt. Johnson just couldn't quite get to a Werner cross in the first minute, there were another two half chances in the first three minutes, Spurs dominated and Brighton couldn't get a foothold in the game. 

In the 22nd minute, Maddison had a goal ruled out by VAR for a very marginal offside but within a minute we were ahead. Maddison won the ball and found Solanke who threaded an inch perfect pass through to Johnson who finished first time with his left foot in to the corner.

Brighton began to get themselves into the game and made a couple of chances. Spurs then added a second goal eight minutes before half-time when Werner pulled a ball back to Maddison whose shot was on target but not particularly powerful. Fortunately, Brighton keeper Verbruggen didn't properly deal with it and the ball ended up in the net.

What happened in the first twenty minutes of the second half perfectly encapsulate the last forty years in the history of the club. Last weekend with Son injured and Ben Davies not selected for the matchday squad, I think I'd be right in saying that Man Utd away was the first league game since Pochettino joined the club that not one player that played under him was involved.

Poch, just before he joined Spurs

With that in mind I was thinking that maybe this game will be the genuine start of the reboot, the point I'll look back to, the point where I can finally stop saying things like "<player x ?, he's not fit to lace <player y from the Poch era> boots".

Alas, this lasted for a week and normality returned in this aforementioned twenty minute period. A mistake by Van der Ven, led to a worse mistake by Odogie and Minteh made it 1-2.  Ten minutes later pathetically weak challenges by Bentancur and Romero led to Rutter adding the equaliser. 

By this point the defensive section of the team, bar Vicario, resembled the Keystone Cops on a particularly disorganised evening. Solanke and Johnson were left up front looking like the band that played on the deck of the Titanic as the boat went down.

When Brightons inevitable third goal arrived from the completely unmarked Danny Welbeck (his first goal against Spurs for a decade) eight minutes later the match was over even though there was still twenty-five minutes plus stoppage time to go. The team that had pretty much dominated the first half had collapsed completely. 

We're on our sixth Prime Minister since Welbeck's last goal v Spurs

Ange left it almost another quarter of an hour before making any substitutions. Some have criticised him for this but I think he was as shell shocked as the fans watching it all unfold. Bissouma and Saar replaced Bentancur and Werner. With five minutes to go there was another fleeting glance of Mikey Moore who replaced Maddison.

In his post match interview Ange said this was the worse defeat of his tenure so far due to the lack of heart shown in the second half. Whats most worrying for me is that bar having Werner on the left and not Son, this is our strongest line up, certainly on paper. Its not a young team like the Europa / Carabao sides of the last few weeks. Johnson and Odogie were the only ones in the starting line up under twenty four.

A lot has been made of the 'Leadership Group' to which Vicario has just apparently been inducted. Obviously the captain Son was missing but surely on the pitch we should be looking towards Maddison and more so Romero, the two vice-captains, to be setting an example. 

Happy Birthday Vic, 28 today.

One of my old managers from work used to say that no matter how good a football team is, you always need someone out there who can 'put a few fucks about'. I didn't want to do this but I think the entire back four from peak-Poch (Walker, Rose, Vertonghen & Alderweireld) were all capable of this. That's a major factor to going the whole of the 16-17 season unbeaten at home. I'm not sure there's anyone now that the others can really look to when things start to go belly-up.

We now have a ten day pause in the league programme (don't you just love International breaks?) before taking on West Ham at home. I'd like to think lessons will have been learned at The Amex, unfortunately history tells me otherwise.