Far too ponderous

WBA 1 SPURS 1

Once again against WBA it was a frustrating performance that seemed to be played at half pace. Playing slowly means you don't pull the opposition out of position and they can retain their shape, thus their defensive stability.

We maintained our unbeaten record thanks to a clever Dele Alli finish after a pass from Eriksen and clever work from Son, who looked lively when he came on. Wanyama was back to rolling the ball to a player so he has to wait for it to arrive, far, far too lazy for what we needed today.

Mousa Sissoko resembled a bull in a china shop today, little technical skill, all power and effort. He is the type of player we need to give others a rest but this wasn't his finest day at the office.

The 'hammer blow' headline of losing Mousa Dembele that Football Insider were telling us about was shown up for what it was when he came on in the second half. Eric Dier slotted in easily at centre-back when Toby Alderweireld was stretchered off and we'll have to wait 48 hours before he can be scanned and the injury assessed.

Vincent Janssen was superb with his hold up play and laid on chances for teammates who couldn't tuck them away, however, he had no real chances himself and didn't look a goal threat today. It'll come.

Hugo Lloris was incredibly casual with the ball at his feet and we were very confident passing around at the back even when we were put under pressure. We seemed to have taken the confidence in our passing game up a notch.

Our third draw on th trot against WBA sees us drop to third, maybe fourth after the Monday night game between Liverpool and Manchester United at Anfield. We have set a new Premier League record for the most amount of time gone without conceding a goal from open play, we passed the previous record held by Liverpool since 2007 at half time.

If we were to win this game we had to move the ball quicker than we were, having said that we created perhaps 3 chances where we should have scored, two of them one-on-one with the goalkeeper and came off second best. We have talked about being clinical before and this aspect of our game being an achilles heel. We really do have a very poor one-on-one record.

On to the UEFA Champions League and Bayer Leverkusen away. It'll be a tougher game than some are expecting I think.

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