AS DANNY ROSE trudged off the pitch at the end of a dismal 2-1 defeat to Stoke City, an oxygen mask over his face, one would have been forgiven for drawing comparisons with Tottenham’s display.
Having played out a 2-1 win over Asteras Tripolis in Greece on Thursday, Spurs returned out of puff, struggling to deal with the conditions imposed upon them by the Potters.
Rose was one of the guilty parties, turning in a lifeless display, and the impressive Jonathan Walters on the flank continually bypassed him before he received a knock to his chest — which led him to scream to the bench that he couldn’t breathe. Nor could White Hart Lane following Nacer Chadli’s brilliant late volley, which halved the deficit and gave the home support hope of another grandstand finish to match last weekend’s turnaround at Aston Villa.
It proved a false dawn. Chadli impressed throughout, his pace and trickery leaving Stoke on the back foot, but that could not be applied to many.
Mauricio Pochettino appeared aghast at such a performance, repeatedly yelling “play, play” from his position on the touchline. While he did not receive his preferred transfer targets, the likes of Morgan Schneiderlin and Mateo Musacchio, Franco Baldini recruited five players on his behalf this summer and only one — Federico Fazio — made it into the starting XI here. The centre-back turned in a performance of such ineptness that it would be fair to draw comparisons with the likes of Pascal Cygan and William Prunier.
There is little chance of Pochettino being sacked in the coming months, despite Daniel Levy’s famously itchy trigger finger and the pocket of fans booing at full-time, but there is a guarantee that he will want to perform major surgery next summer. He clearly does not rate a number of players within an already bloated squad; the likes of Paulinho, Vlad Chiriches and Nabil Bentaleb all left out of the matchday squad. Bentaleb may have the excuse of youth but the former pair are both full internationals, with Paulinho a surefire starter for Brazil before his abysmal World Cup.
Yet it is not those who were left behind who contributed to such a flaccid performance on Sunday. Mauricio Pochettino spoke afterwards of wanting to “change the mentality” at Tottenham — something which he has said in the past — and it is a necessity that he do so. There are simply too many passengers in this Tottenham team, too many players who don’t care enough. Harry Kane and Ryan Mason aside, there is a plague of apathy engulfing the squad.
That pair can be excused because of their roots; they have come through the ranks, have had their knocks and are now desperate to keep their shirts. They may not have been able to spark a turnaround but they tried, running themselves into the ground and toiling for the cause. Kane dropped so deep at one point that he was tackling Walters on the edge of his own box.
(Tottenham Hotspur’s Harry Kane looks dejected during the Barclays Premier League match at White Hart Lane yesterday)
But the likes of Emmanuel Adebayor — a substitute but a distraction on the touchline, his head-shaking and accusatory pointing an unwanted sideshow — Christian Eriksen, Etienne Capoue, Mousa Dembele and Jan Vertonghen appear to have regressed since joining Spurs.
Eriksen, a talented playmaker on his day, went missing, much like he did against Aston Villa at Villa Park. He showed no willingness to fight for the ball, to drop off and make things happen. His performance could be summed up in his set-piece deliveries, with each failing to beat the first man before he was unceremoniously hooked at half-time.
Dembele, his replacement, was signed as a box-to-box presence, the kind of player to produce lung-busting runs from deep and arrive late to score, a la Frank Lampard. Instead he has become an ungainly hybrid midfielder, one who is continually unsure whether to stick or twist. When he drives at the opposition he can cause problems, as evidenced in the first five minutes of his performance on Sunday, but he appears perplexingly nervous when things start to go against him, much like the rest of his team-mates.
Capoue, booed for playing the ball short continually, has not looked the same player since injuring himself last September. Following a promising start, he has simply petered out. Vertonghen, however, is a different case. Left out of the starting XI, he cut a forlorn figure on the bench and did not look at all happy throughout the performance. His heart would appear to lie elsewhere; he has refused to sign a new contract and it would be little surprise were he to press for a move in either January or the summer.
The regression of certain players cannot be a criticism leveled at Pochettino; he is working with a sub-par squad at a club with ideas above its station. Tim Sherwood infamously claimed last season that those who think Spurs can finish in the top four needed to “wake up”.
There is little suggestion that the current crop can prove him wrong and, despite many at the club insisting that this season is a transitional one, they will not be able to quench the thirsts of the masses at the Lane, who cast envious eyes towards Arsenal and Chelsea whenever they welcome any European giants to London.
They were that club once, when Luka Modric, Gareth Bale and Rafael van der Vaart lit up the Champions League under Harry Redknapp, but those days are gone. Modric and Bale are in Madrid and Van der Vaart, inexplicably, is in Germany.
Pochettino must wonder what he has inherited; Tottenham go through managers like other clubs go through training-ground cones and did so last season, with Levy first asking Andre Villas-Boas to get the best out of a squad crippled by the loss of Bale before Sherwood was given the same task.
Both failed, but not because of their tactics or their personalities, however brash they may have been. They failed simply because Tottenham, currently, are not good enough to finish in the top six.
The players must stand up and be counted or time will eventually run out for Pochettino and he will become another of Levy’s managerial casualties through no fault of his own.
By Harry Sherlock at White Hart Lane, Goal.com
Originally published 11.57
