Back to the bad Tottenham once again

Back to the usual turgid Tottenham, clueless at home with no width, yet we created more with Lennon on the pitch for 8 minutes than we did in the rest of the game virtually.

Back to the bad Tottenham once again


Our default is to go backwards and so we once again let teams get everyone behind the ball before we consider going forward. The only time we look dangerous is when we play quicker, so we play slow! Slow passing and slow passes, when will we learn to pass the ball to a team-mate with more speed on it, instead of simply rolling the ball so he has to wait for it?

Lamela once again shows he can't hack it at Premier League level, the game is simply too quick for him, he needs an eternity on the ball, which he got in the slow pace of Italian football. Given all the time in the world to stop and think and he can play but a top class player doesn't need time to think. At £30 million he should have vision, that means constantly looking around to see where players are, it's not difficult.

We yet again allowed them to defend the width of the box by not playing with any width and our players are not creative enough around the box. The difference was summed up at the end when they went for the game that was there's for the taking, a midfield runner and they are through our defence with one pass, where were our midfield runners? We don't have any, they all, Eriksen included, stay behind the ball.

Palace were easily the better side, created far more chances and with better finishing or Hugo Lloris not on top form, would have picked up the three points. They showed us how to use the width we needed but didn't have.

Brining Lennon on with only seven and a half minutes to go hardly gives him time to do anything, yet he was involved in creating two chances. He played a ball to Kane in space that Kane laboured after, his cross was headed down by Chadli and Paulinho's shot chested away. He then laid a pass for Chadli to have a shot. That took him four and a half minutes and was more than Lamela did in the whole of the first half. He should have been introduced earlier.

Soldado once again showed he has no confidence, no doubt no helped by being dropped when scoring the winner last week against Everton. The January transfer window can't come soon enough so an overhaul can begin, if we can get rid of some players, but nobody wants to pay more than half the fee we paid for them.

Another back to square one performance. Simply not good enough, if Franco Baldini is doing the negotiating he is going to have to earn his wages to transform this squad.