Physical Intelligence - Day 34

If there is one consistent criticism of Mauricio Pochettino's teams are that his high-intensity approach has never lasted a full season.  Every single team he has managed has lost energy and could not see the season through and today's game against West Ham, a team that all the other top teams have got past without much trouble, made them look like equals.  An added factor today's game was the unsettled right back Walker who played an awful game, and perhaps has had his head turned to a mega transfer.  Several times he steamed up field leaving space for West Ham to attack, and with a suitable cover in Kieron Trippier, it would be good to sell Walker for as much as money as possible at the $50 million mark. 

What Tottenham's loss ultimately showed is that Pochettino lacks the physical intelligence to build a team that can play an entire season . Today the loss was reminiscent of last years collapse, but the collapse will only reveal itself if Spurs do badly in the next three games.  What today's result did provide was a clear road for a physically intelligent team like Chelsea to win the 2 games they need to claim the title from their last four matches. 

The good news for me is that I had ended a week of very late nights, not sleeping before 3am on any of these days and this habit was mentioned in last years log, so one year on the only thing that works is finding an activity like a key soccer match that makes the act of exercise bearable.  More so that I engaged two 50 minute sessions speaks to finding that external source to distract the mind off the monotony of exercise.  It isn't the case that I sleep late because when I set my mind to waking up at 4am as a challenge before, I met that challenge. 

For sure it was frustrating to watch a flat and tired display from Tottenham today, especially against a rival like West Ham, but I also appreciate Spurs have 9 league games in a row, and the record for league wins in a row is 13, so that is a difficult thing for any team to do.  Yet Spurs FA Cup Semi-final loss against Chelsea broke their winning run albeit not in the league, and perhaps the Arsenal result was not so much about Spurs ascendancy as how bad Arsenal are right now.

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