Shambolic Spurs

It has been on the cards for some while as Spurs season continues on its bumpy road.  The hammering Bayern Munich gave Tottenham could have been worse if Arsenal a few weeks ago had played with equal confidence as the German team did today.  Tottenham learned that without Harry Winks holding the middle, Spurs become jelly and butter.  Winks may have made mistakes that led to a 4-2 score, but without him Bayern began scoring at will, as if they were playing a school boy side instead of a team that reached the Champions League final.

The loss in the Champions League was painful and probably created psychological marks on the confidence levels of the Tottenham team, but this result will reverberate around Europe.  Not only in terms of just how good the latest version of Bayern Munich is, but how awful Tottenham really are.  Fans piled out of the Tottenham Stadium and no one can blame them.  It is not just a series of club mismanagement mishaps that include leaving three players being able to ride out the year and end it with free transfers, it puts into question a part of Mauricio Pochettino's own history as a coach.

Pochettino has been fired in the past in Spain when Espanyol no longer responded to his methods.  Tottenham players who do love the manager as a person, are now in total disarray.  Spurs were fielding several players today that they had signaled to the market that they wanted to off-load.  How does a team that was doing so well become so crestfallen all of a sudden.  Spurs were ripped apart in a way that ended with embarrassment becoming the chief emotion today.

Some Spurs fans are turning on their manager, demanding he be let go and asking for Jose Mourinho to replace him.  What is the word so far emanating from Tottenham on this?  Speculation abounds that what the Spurs hierarchy want to do is to appoint Gareth Southgate.  That would be a manager that has achieved even less than Pochettino has and who also has never won anything of note as a manager.  Getting Southgate will simply turn a sinking ship into a ship rotting closer to administration - because if the dominoes tumble for Spurs, the debt load they are holding due to the cost escalation of the stadium build is frightening - or at least unless a big money buyer has $2 billion pounds to spend on acquiring Tottenham from the investment group that currently owns Tottenham.

This was not Southampton, nor was Bayern Munich an inexperienced and young team like Ajax Amsterdam.  Today was a rude lesson as to what happens when a team makes simple textbook mistakes in the big leagues.  It takes the wind out of the notion that Tottenham is one of the Big Teams.  The Big Teams do not lose a spate of games in succession including at home to Newcastle United and in a cup game against teams like Colchester United.

The Big Teams take the sword to teams like Watford and punish these teams for their errors such as the 8-0 drubbing Manchester City gave Watford.  For sure there are always going to be upsets, like Norwich beating Manchester City - but that is a one-off moment, not a record of problems that equate a period of 30 games where Spurs have managed only 8 victories.  That is an awful record for any "Big Team".

Spurs are soon to face Watford, and that could be the next source of embarrassment -  because Watford have failed to win this season and a win against Tottenham will simply pour more salt into the Spurs wounds, at a time when they need a ship steadying result.

The 2-1 win against Southampton was not that ship steadying result.  If anything Spurs nearly made a pigs ear out of that game and it was the failures of Southampton rather than the success of Spurs that cost the Saints that game.  What is worse for Spurs is that Liverpool awaits in the Premier League at the end of October.  When a team loses its mojo, the Premier League is no place for the feint hearted.  If the Pochettino years had seemingly put the word "Spursy" into the dustbin of past failures, in one gruesome and painful evening in a Champions League game played at home, "Spursy" is what the team became again. 

What Pochettino puts into the Tottenham team is pure emotion and run your socks off spirit.  What Mourinho puts into a team is steel, a center that first ensures that the team does not concede and he is not against sacrificing pretty football in the name of winning a game.  When Spurs fans call out for Mourinho they should know that they are saying NO to a big Spurs tradition - where Spurs fans acknowledged periods of brilliant play but not a Champions spirit.  Under Pochettino it seemed that the team was cultivating that Champions Spirit.

Yet the Champions League semi-final victory or some would call it a "miracle" underscored that the Spurs team and manager went into emotional tumbles, showing the world that they could not believe they had won.  Pochettino's remarks served to underscore that reaching the final was improbable and not what he had expected.  There in that emotional response to reaching the Champions League final, there were revealing signs that Spurs do not possess a ruthless spirit.

Where were Spurs when Jurgen Klopp was free to join any of the Big Six teams in England?  A proven winner in Germany, with perhaps only not succeeding in Champions League finals the only question mark - at least he had that track record. Talk of appointing Gareth Southgate a potential successor to Mauricio Pochettino should he leave in the summer, simply underscores how short-sighted and bereft the real belief there is in Football operations.  Time and time again the actions of the team point to Financial operations.  Yet without football operations working at optimum, Spurs are losing millions in success and finding themselves in the kind of position they are in now. 

This however was not the low point for Tottenham.  That would have been the case had Arsenal unleashed their potential and routed Spurs as ruthlessly as Bayern Munich did with their seven goals today.  It is not that Munich had to raise their game by several gears, they simply got past Spurs defense with consummate ease, walking the ball in.  The substitutions at the end of the game that led Spurs to go from a 4-2 defeat to a 7-2 defeat, revealed limitations in Pochetino's managerial nous.  For sure it was good in spirit to try to rescue the game, but not by taking the core away.  What is most damaging is that removing just one player from that core, can lead to a team that is at sixes and sevens.  What Spurs fans saw today was just more "Spursy" - the meaning of which is just at the point of success and promising much, Spurs teams have destroyed all expectations and revealed their hidden weak core.  Spurs are Spursy once again.