The Sensible One...post Norwich Game

Hello everyone and welcome to another Tottenham Talk post from The Sensible One.

Some fans understand football, some fans don't.

There are never excuses for winners, but there are circumstances and circumstances have to be taken into account.

However, football is an emotional game and emotion isn't conducive to good decision making unless it is channeled.

Emotion can be used to recreate feelings of success that allow the individual to act as they did successfully before.

For fans, however, there is simply success and failure, the highs of winning, the lows of losing.

Fans want someone to blame, irrespective of performance or circumstances.

Tottenham are under siege from all sides.

There is the freak situation of both Kane and Son out long term, add to that Sissoko, Lloris has been out long-term, Lamela, Ndombele has never been fit, you know the score but I could go on and on about this season's injuries and the injuries carried over from the summer.

Players are not robots and emotional fans simply forget that.

Spurs have crazy fixture scheduling with TV companies only interested in their audiences making matters even worse.

A depleted squad means players have to be overplayed.

It takes 48 hours to recover from a football game, but there is a build-up of fatigue over a season.

The fatigue at Tottenham has been pushed further than any other side and further than we can probably all remember in today's game where off the ball running is so much greater.

The distances players cover is immense.

Jose Mourinho pointed out at the after-game press conference that Bergwijn and Lucas came off because their tanks were empty and they were in danger of picking up an injury.

Fatigue causes injury, the body says enough is enough and gives out in some form, often a muscle tear, it's what happened to Harry Kane.

Arguably the best thing for Tottenham is to be out of the FA Cup and to go out of the Champions League so that the side get the maximum possible rest and all effort is placed into qualifying for next seasons Champions League.

That is and has to be the priority.

When Son was injured, I wrote that fans will have to get used to Spurs trying to win 1-0 for the remainder of the season because scoring will be difficult, so defending becomes a priority.

That leads to other sides looking better than they are, it leads to football that the fans don't find attractive. That means it tips fans over the edge with every mistake or any dropped point.

That isn't helpful, quite the opposite.

You can see the players are playing on empty, reactions are slower, anticipation is slower, decision making is slower.

FAans forget players are not robots, they expect a top-level performance every game regardless of circumstances, they forget circumstances.

I'm disappointed with the Vorm error that gifted Norwich their equalizer, of course I am, but they never looked like scoring until that point. The fatigued outfield players were doing a fantastic containing job.

We lost, disappointing but I'm not disappointed and using my coaching outlook coach to the positives.

Skipp, Vertonghen, Dier, Lo Celso, Lamela for instance but also the extra recovery time going out of the FA Cup brings, the fighting spirit the players are showing and next season to name a few.

OK, onto the incident at the end of the game where Eric Dier went into the crowd to confront a fan sat next to his brother and family.

There is a suggestion that the fan was also racially abusing Gedson Fernandes after his penalty miss.

Dier went to help his brother, to stand up for him and the fan tried to run away. You can watch the video at the link below.

Eric Dier Going Into The Crowd

Eric’s late maternal granddad, Ted Croaker, who was Secretary of the Football Association from 1973 to 1989, once crawled two miles from his crashed bomber with broken ankles to get help for his crewmates.

Some of that fire and determination has passed on into Eric Dier's genes.

A player going into a crowd can not be condoned but I don't know the full circumstances and we'll have to wait for a full report before we leap to conclusions.

Jose Mourinho has spoken to Dier and states that if the club take action against the player he will not agree with it.

That tells you there is more to this than we know at present but that there is passion amongst the players too.

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