Spurs disappoint in Europe
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The Athletic. ♪

Hello everybody and welcome once again to The View from the Lane, the multi-award winning Tottenham Hotspur podcast from The Athletic. I'm Danny Kelly and with me from The Athletic are James Moore and Jack Pitt-Brooke. I'm going to start this by saying thank you for being here and listening to us because I understand that our performances and results like that last night, it must be

difficult sometimes to tune into podcasts where you're going to hear people, familiar voices, though strangers to you, talking about the team that you support and love disparagingly. I feel the same way, and I'm sure my colleagues do too. It's just really difficult on days like this to make the kind of entertainment out of football that we want to do. Equally, we're not here to tell lies and make out that something's

you know, black when it's white, tall when it's short or anything like that. But listen again, thanks for regularly tuning in the vast numbers that you do. And particularly on days like this, it shows great commitment, um, to ourselves in the podcast, or it shows great commitment to a kind of self-flagellation, but you're welcome along anyway. Hi, James. Hi, Jack as well. Um, no point really in going through the individual events in the game though. I'm sure one or two of the more, um, startling, uh,

things that happen will crop up. This was a game, lads, that gave something. It was the game that gave something to everybody. If you're Levy out, loads of evidence. If you're Ange out, loads of evidence. If you hate the players, loads of evidence. Those who like a drama of a mid-season sack-in, loads of stuff for you there to get chewing on.

haters in general but let's start jack you know i'll give you the the chance to come off a shorter run because i can see james is pouring the ground there um he's moving the microphone closer to his mouth so he does you don't miss a scintilla of what he's got to say jack i mean obviously it was hopeless obviously it was useless but how why this is the most important game of the season we said that um before the start of it and that's what they produce

I don't know. I don't have a really good answer. Thanks for listening. Thanks very much. I don't have a... I don't have what feels like a satisfactory answer to that question. Clearly...

I think we have to start with what we saw, right? Which is that the overall performance level of the team was really bad, like really surprisingly bad. And I think for a lot of people, it's the performance, not the result that is the big problem. I mean, a 1-0 defeat is manageable. It's not insuperable at all. You can get over that. But I think to play that badly in a game that big is what has given a lot of people, I think, a lot of anxiety and a lot of worry. Yeah.

since yesterday evening. Why it was that bad? Well, I mean, I think the confidence of the players looks low. I think that what really struck me was the inability or unwillingness to do anything in possession. They had, what, 65% possession, I think? Yeah.

But it was almost all of it was possession on AZ's terms, right? Like they had the ball in positions where they couldn't hurt the opposition. And they just didn't really do anything with it. They didn't really create, I can't remember a single proper chance that they had over the course of the 90 minutes. They had that free kick.

The free kick, yeah. I'd kind of tried to memory hole that one. And, you know, I mean, they probably should have lost by more. It was a little bit like the Man City game in the sense that they conceded enough chances in the first half, I think, to be 3 or 4-0 down. Got away with it. But then in the City game, at least they played well in the second half and, you know, you could leave with a bit of pride. Whereas yesterday...

the very marginal improvement in the second half wasn't really worth anything in the end. So yeah, we can talk for hours to try and figure out why it was so bad, but I don't really have a satisfactory answer to that one at the moment. James, what did you feel about the game? Not the individual events, but how we got to where we are and what they did on the night.

Yeah, I'd say it was stunningly bad. And like in a sort of broader context, I know there are a lot of people and Jack's kind of nodded to it there, who believe that Spurs will turn it around in the second leg, that should be, if not a formality, something they can do at least relatively comfortably.

I would sort of contest that when Spurs were playing quite a lot better in October, they played Alkmaar at home and won 1-0 in a relatively scrappy game. And they did deserve to win, but it was far from comfortable. So we'll wait and see. But I mean, there's nothing that's happened last night that would give you any confidence that this team are going to be able to win this competition, which, as we've established, is now the whole point of this season. So yeah, I'd say it's fairly deflating, not on the basis of what it means for qualification from this tie, but...

but what it means for the chance of Spurs kind of rescuing anything at all from this season. Yeah, I've got to be honest. At the present moment, and I will calm down, I don't care about the second leg. I need to understand why a team...

With the background Spurs have, with the support it has, with the money that's been spent on it, though that is not necessarily always an indicator of quality, how they can produce what they produced last night in a game that everybody agrees, and I'm sure they don't disagree, was really important. And this is where I'll start then, you know, sorry, James, I'll come back to you then.

The way the club is run, we all know that the money pours in, the wages don't match. So that's that. We all know that the manager, you know, he's done what he's done in his life. I want to talk about the players first today, because you're not allowed to accuse them of not trying, right? Did they look to you like people who were going balls out to ensure that the

The 11 of them, 12, 13, 14, whatever it turned out to be, were giving Spurs the maximum chance to get the result in a game that was so important. And I'm not putting you under the bus, because to me, it looked like some of them... I'm not allowed to say they didn't care, because in a court of law, you can't prove that. But that's what it looked like to me. I mean, look, it was a sort of list, list, direction, list performance. And...

I mean, you're right in what you say. You do have to kind of put a lot of that at the door of the players because they looked really, really unmotivated. And for all you can say, well, that's the manager's job to motivate the players. And obviously that is part of his job. Like top footballers who were led to believe are determined to end this trophy drought this season or getting paid a hell of a lot of money to do that and have largely underperformed this season across the whole piece.

They shouldn't really need to be told by the manager that this is a big game. You need to at least put in maximum effort and go the extra mile and all that nonsense to stay in the game. And the reality is they could have done that and lost a game 1-0. But I think we'd all feel very, very different if that had been the case. I think that's the biggest concern. And I guess you kind of alluded to it there. Losing the first leg 1-0 in a two-legged European tie where there were no away goals, it isn't really such a disaster.

But the performance or lack of from pretty much every player on that pitch just wouldn't fill me with any confidence. As I say, they'd be able to get through this tie, let alone win this competition. And that's the most staggering thing. I mean, look, think about it like this. If you went back in time a month or just over...

to immediately after that Brentford game. And you're looking ahead then to a League Cup semi-final second leg against Liverpool, an FA Cup four for Antalya Aston Villa, and this first leg of the Europa League last 16. I don't think we would have known at that point who it was, but you know it was Alkmaar or Sussiedad, I think maybe. You know, you would look ahead, you're looking ahead to those three matches or four or three of the second leg. Like you have, we know this season has been a struggle, but

But you've seen a performance against Brentford where they've been incredibly dogged at both ends of the pitch. They've defended well, stoically. They've attacked in the right way, scored a goal from a set-piece and had a counter-attack. They've looked dangerous in moments. They've defended well. It's been a solid performance. Imagine coming off the back of that game, thinking ahead to those three massive cup games, which are probably the three biggest games Spurs have played in the season now, up to this point. The level of performance across those three games...

for the most part, it's been so, so bad. And I cannot begin to comprehend how in all three of those games, I've played that badly. Like, that just gives me absolutely no confidence that this is going to turn around in the longer term. I hear what you guys are saying about motivation. My instinctive reading of this, and this is that

To me, watching it, it didn't strike me that motivation was the issue so much as confidence. I didn't think that the players didn't look like they believed that they could do anything with the ball. And to me, that was kind of the most damning thing, right? Is that we're kind of almost two seasons into the Postacoglu era.

And the one thing that you would want the team to be able to do is to dominate with the game with the ball and play with an intensity which allows them to create chances. Like, that is the whole point of Posto Cognou being the manager of Tottenham, right? And they just...

didn't do it. Like they didn't, they at no point yesterday did they look like, all right, we've got the ball. We're going to, we can now, you know, go up a gear, play with intensity, make good runs, overload in the right areas. And they just, they never looked like they had confidence they could do anything. Like they had so much, so much of the time was like,

Bergweiler, however, having the ball in the middle of the pitch with literally the whole AZ team defending in their own half in a really compact organisation. And Tottenham at no point looked like they knew what to do or they believed that they knew what to do. Literally within three minutes of the game, AZ, they countered down the left and they had a two-on-one against Spence. And that was that attack where Parrott really should have scored at the near post.

That was three minutes into the game. Tottenham, I don't think, created a single clever overload or asked AZ a problem which AZ didn't know how to solve at any point. It was so predictable. It was so passive, even in possession. And it just made me think, do the players... I guess there's kind of two possible theories here, which are not mutually exclusive. One is that

They have no physical energy, right? Like, the Ange ball is about physical output, and they don't seem to be able to play with that physical energy because of the schedule and the injuries and the players are exhausted and some of them are coming back. The other is that they've kind of lost the belief in attacking football because they haven't really played...

They haven't played a tackle... For better or worse, they haven't really played that style of football for a long time. Even the good wins recently. Man United, the 1-0 they should have lost. Brentford, the 2-0 they scored a set-piece and a counter-attack. Even Ipswich, the 4-1. The first two goals on the counter and then they picked them off at the end. They've not really... I can't remember the last time where they dominated possession and they used that possession to...

You know, to overwhelm the opposition and to create lots of chances, which is what it's meant to be. That is what they're meant to do. And they just haven't done it for such a long time. I watched me yesterday. I thought, you don't know how to play Angeball anymore. It was laughable at times. I hear the words of confidence and you can be forgiven for lacking confidence, particularly when you're heading for your 18th defeat of a season that's still got quite a chunk to go.

But the lack of intensity is unforgivable. You know, in any way, walk of life, if you've got something important to do, whether it's personal, professional, sporting, being in the moment, being committed to the thing, the, you know, whatever that gets, however that gets measured as intensity to just stroll about, which they were doing. Let's be honest about it here. And we'll get onto the forwards in a minute. But Jack, Mike, I'll come back to you then.

We talk about Spurs as the team isn't doing this, the team isn't doing that. Is there an argument it's not a team anymore? Because a team does one of two things. Either the three parts of it, the back, the middle, and the front, connect with each other in meaningful ways, or you move as a unit, as one, where those designations become meaningless. And some Dutch teams are very good at this over the years, for instance. Spurs are neither of those things. They're so disconnected from each other. How can that be at a professional football club?

Well, I think there's a lot of individual circumstances going on with the attacking players. If you look at the front line they had last night, Son has not played well for a long time. Tell hasn't really played well since joining Tottenham and I don't think he's a centre-forward.

And Johnson isn't playing especially well at the moment either. And so you've got three, like the three guys you've got who need to be really provoking the opposition with their movement. Wasn't really happening at all. And on top of that, you've got, you know, they're very reliant on Adogge and Spence. Spence, I thought, tried quite a lot. Adogge doesn't look right to me. And so, and then Madison, yeah.

You know, this is the kind of game where you want Madison to really take responsibility. And he did a bit in the second half, I think, but in the first half he wasn't really in the game. And so a lot of the individuals who you would want to be performing at a top level weren't. And, you know, we can get into, yeah, they would have been better if Solanke had played or Kuliseski had played or Romero had played or Van de Ven had played. And all of that is true. But I mean, we might get into this later. I kind of sense like people's patience for that particular argument is wearing a bit thin. Yeah.

James, I'm going to throw the question to you that is a cartoon fizzing bomb. Son, in his decline, well, let's call it that because let's be honest what it is. We celebrate when he does well. Tell, you know, new country, new environment, new position, all the rest of it. And Brennan Johnson, when he's not scoring one-touch finishes at the far post,

You've been watching Spurs nearly three decades now, I suppose. Is that probably too much? I don't know. Have you ever seen a weedier front line than what Spurs put out last night? Weeds. I mean it in a playground sense. They weren't affecting each other. They weren't affecting the opposition. Just so easy to take the ball off and to just... Yeah, I was really surprised to see that front three start in the game again. And...

Just to kind of go back to your point about this team not looking kind of like a cohesive unit, I think one of their biggest problems is there's not really anyone in that team but Madison to an extent I guess and maybe Bensica but there aren't many players in that team who will put their foot on the ball and kind of bring the game under control if you see what I mean. There's so much chaos going on with this team from back to front with that XI.

And there's just so little pause for thought and sense of taking the game under control and resetting and allowing everyone to reconfigure and move into shape and whatever. It's just constant chaos. And I kind of feel like if you're going to have a game like that, if that's going to be your kind of modus operandi, then maybe you want...

do you not want Oduber or Moore in the team? Like a properly creative player. Someone who's going to try and beat, you know, run at an opponent and take a player on and try and get a ball across the penalty area. Because that isn't really what Johnson or Son are going to do. And for all we complain about,

tell not looking like a centre forward and I think that is the case like how many how many times has a ball come across the box to him like how many shots has he had by that Man United game how many times he had a shot in the penalty area how many times he'd been in a position to shoot he just hasn't had those chances and yes part of that is part of that is his sometimes slightly odd movement when the ball is in the middle third of the pitch and I do think that is quite a big problem and you saw the difference when Solanke was on briefly

But neither of those wide players have done the thing that we're led to believe wide players in a landspots to Cogley system are meant to do. And we've seen Johnson do loads, which is drag balls across the six-yard box or attack the far post. And because neither of them are doing one thing, then neither of them are able to do the other in as much as there were no balls to attack. And they're just completely nullified. And I was really surprised. I mean, Moorhead's barely played in the last month. Having kind of come back into the team at the start of the year,

scored his goal against Elfsburg, got an assist against Everton. He looked like a player who could affect the game. And he's not played since that Villa FA Cup game. I don't think there's been any explanation for why that has been. You saw Timo Werner play against Man City for 20 minutes. And we kind of thought at the time, well, maybe he's done that because Werner can't play in the European game. Perhaps somebody could ask the question at a press conference so they can be belittled by the manager for asking a perfectly normal question.

Jack, that'll be your job. Well, he's actually... The press conference is happening this morning, but I am... I've broken my toe, so I'm not... I broke a toe, yeah. How did you do that? I think I banged it a while ago, and then I kind of ran on it, and it ballooned up, so I'm now in a protective boot. Oh, how very professional. So I...

I might need painkilling injections if I'm going to play again in the second leg. Just to be clear, Danny, we're not going to rush him back in too quickly. No. Then he may be missing for ages. Maybe I'll play against Fulham. Business taxes. We're stressing about all the time and all the money you spent on your taxes. This is my bill?

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The trouble is with this performance, from the top of the club down, is there's so much wrong. They actually get away with it because it's like whack-a-mole, one of those fairground games,

where no matter what you talk about, you're not addressing that issue or this bigger issue. And there'll be people screaming at us saying, it's all about Levy and all the rest of it. Or there'll be people saying it's not just the players, it's the manager. It's so tricky. There is no argument that you could make that would not be subject to whataboutery. What about the recruitment? But then if you talk about the recruitment, it's, well, what about the tactics? And if you talk about the tactics, well, you're letting the players off the hook.

So it's almost impossible to pin down and to accurately apportion blame. I just, sorry, can I just, I want to come back to something James said two minutes ago, which is that I completely agree about the, like, the lack of anything really from the wide players. Like, as James says, in this system, the whole point, I mean, the whole point of the, and Andrew said this, like, the whole point of the inverting fullbacks, right, is that you get

the wing is really high and wide and attacking defenders one against one and attacking the box. Johnson in possession doesn't really offer much. And Son, I don't think, in possession also doesn't really offer much at the moment. The only wide player that Spurs have in the last few weeks who's offered anything one against one is Odderbeer.

Like, of all the attacking players, Odderbeer has been, I think, even though he's only played in short bits, he's had more... Like, when you watch him play, you think, yeah, this is what Tottenham need. This is what Tottenham have needed all season. I think he has to play in the second leg. He had the only shot on target last night, didn't he? But it wasn't a shot, was it? Let's be truthful. Well, talk to Opta about that, mate. Fair enough. You don't make the rules. I know that, yeah. But I think that particular issue, it just really highlights, like...

The fact that you can almost to an extent blame who you want. You know, you can blame why haven't they got, why didn't they sign better wide players? Why do they, I mean, you can blame the injuries in the sense that the one good wide player they signed has been injured for almost all of the season. You can blame the confidence because Johnson and Son don't look like they're playing with any confidence in possession. You can blame the players themselves for maybe not wanting it enough. I don't particularly agree with that.

interpretation but lots of people will so even even if you can identify like the specific thing that's going on in the pitch you you from that you can still you know extrapolate to four or five different scenarios of of who you find to be responsible for it so it's uh you know you can almost kind of choose the argument that suits your own prejudices basically exactly um

And just to go back to what you said about the system, the system is almost irrelevant now, Jack, because from the moment of, it's what we do, mate, Spurs are so predictable, the inverted fullbacks, everyone does it with one or in some cases both the fullbacks. And the idea that somehow this is going to cause teams to get overloaded and leave your high wide player in a position to take on his man and get the cross across is

I know the opposition knowing what you're going, we know what Mo Salah's going to do when he gets the ball, but you can't stop him. All right. But at least in Spurs' case, everyone knows what they're going to try and do. And it hasn't worked for occasional matches. Worked against Southampton. They have said it.

occasional matches hasn't worked for over a year now. So I think Harking, what we're supposed to be doing, sorry, Harking is judgmental. I'm not sure I necessarily agree with that. I don't really agree with that. I think you can say it hasn't worked consistently for that period of time. But I mean, there have obviously been games where

If you look at that Man City away game, for example, Aston Villa at home, the games in the first half of the season that they won handsomely, all of those games you'd say were pretty good examples of it working. I mean, you obviously could argue that if it isn't working consistently, then there's almost no point. I mean, I think that's a fair argument. I mean, look, I would also say in the last, what, three months, they've evolved or devolved so far away from...

like Angebald doesn't even exist anymore exactly that's so true one I don't think any of the defensive elements of it have ever really been a huge problem to Spurs despite a lot of the noise including on this podcast sometimes about like high lines and inverted fullbacks and stuff all the problems with Angebald I think have been in an attacking sense despite the number of goals they score like when it works it works really well in certain games but when it doesn't they obviously really really struggle to create chances

And that's why you see this thing where the quote-unquote underlying numbers are good over the course of the whole piece. Because over the course of a whole season, they are creating a lot of chances. But they're creating chances in specific games where the kind of prevailing conditions suit them. But when the opposition are set up in the right way or the wrong way from Spurs' perspective...

They really, really struggled to create opportunities. They don't really have that many, as we were saying, they don't really have that many technicians in the team. I completely agree with that. I agree with that so much. I think that's one of the truest things that's been said on this podcast all season. I think they have played Angebal in the first half of this season. I think the last time they played Angebal was probably when they beat Man Utd 4-3 in the League Cup just before Christmas. And I think Angebal basically died when they lost 6-3 to Liverpool a few days after that.

I think since then it's been... They've played like a generic Premier League team. Premier League, sir? Okay. Often in a fairly generic 4-3-3-1 setup or whatever. And I think that at times they were carried for a while by Solanke and Kuliseski and then Solanke got injured.

and then it was kind of Kuliseski by himself and they're kind of you know obviously they have had a few wins recently but they've been a bit fortunate in Brentford certainly Man United Ipswich they were just the better team against a limited opposition but they haven't

They haven't played with any of that, the kind of distinctive marks of Ansball for such a long time. I think they've forgotten how to do it. And yesterday was a day where I think they needed to do it. They needed to play with intensity and to overwhelm the opposition. And they just couldn't do it. And the most damning thing, I think...

you could say about yesterday watching it is that they didn't look like a post-Coglu team and I think somebody on social media said this looks quite a lot like when Mourinho's team lost to Dinamo Zagreb in 2021 and you know that was a game which they lost 3-0 obviously last night they only lost 1-0 but just in terms of the kind of like

If you're coming up to the end of the... What, two-thirds of the way through the manager's second season, he's got all his players in place and they play football that doesn't look anything like him in the game that's going to decide the direction of the season. That, I think, is so... That, to me, the more I think about it, I think that's the most worrying thing, right? It's the lack of identity. Just one last thing on that, by the way. I know there'll be some people listening to this thinking, well, Ange did say in...

the first half of the season and last season he didn't want to stray from his principles famously after that Chelsea game last season he said he didn't want to stray from his principles he had to really kind of indoctrinate the players in this style of play he wanted them to kind of live and breathe Ange Ball he didn't want to stray from that at all because he thought playing a different way even temporarily would mean would kind of weaken their ability diminish their ability to play his style of football

My question, I guess, would be, has he been proven right? Or has what's happened subsequently kind of completely undermined the whole concept? Because to me, it does feel like, and I know I'm answering my own question here, maybe. Good. The reality is, if you're trying to play with that intensity twice a week, every week for a whole season, it's inevitable that you're going to have injuries and fatigue by the time you hit Christmas. You're always going to have to adapt. Right.

Was it always destined to end this way in a season with European football? It's a great question. I guess my answer to that would be the best team in the Premier League by miles and probably maybe the best team in the world is a team which has realised that you can't drive 100 miles an hour all the time. You have to pick your moments. You have to find a way of playing which is repeatable and robust so you can do it twice a week and keep everyone fit.

And that, I think, has really been the great insight of Arna Slot's Liverpool. Whereas I think what Slot's Liverpool have done is they've left a lot of other teams, and I would certainly include Arsenal and Tottenham in this, and maybe a few others. They kind of look a bit like 2010s, like they're trying to play 2010s ball. They're trying to be like, we're going to be like 100 miles an hour all the time, really intense. But I just think with the modern calendar and the fact of how exhausted all the players are after the last five years...

I'm not sure you can, I don't know if you can do that anymore. And I think slot is the first person to see through that and to realise that you can't, it's not just about cranking the intensity lever as far as it will go. You have to find a way that's more repeatable. So I think that I'm not, so the more I think about it, the more I think playing, playing the way that Posticoglu wants to play all the way through this season, every single game,

I mean, would it have been possible, even with an incredibly deep, robust, fit, strong 25-man squad? I don't even know if it would have been. But certainly where they've ended up is a sort of worst-of-both-worlds scenario, I think.

Yeah, I mean, we're always going to play the same way. I'm going to inculcate the players with this and all the rest of it. That is fine in a world that doesn't change around you. I don't know. I'm literally finding, I know my way around a lexicon. I'm finding what struggle to, I'm struggling to find the words to say a million times more. Other teams have resources, have brains, have computers, have different players. They don't have to stand and let you do it.

You know, it's fine in a computer game. We're going to do something extraordinary and nobody's going to ever react to it. You're right. And we've ended up here. Now, look, the last thing I want to say about the thing of Vangeball, and it turns out that for it to work, the two centre-backs have to play, Van de Ven and Christian Romero. One, it allows you a slightly higher line, but two, Romero's the best forward passer in the squad. And three, Van de Ven breaks the line by running very fast at people.

But if you're relying on your two centre-backs, and if it works, I'm not saying if you're relying in that kind of way, if that's what you're doing, then great, you know, but there's no...

plan B. There's nothing to replace them when they're missing. And it does seem a bit odd to me that for creativity, you're relying on the two most defensive players and often the only defensive players in the system. Or am I missing the point where we're playing a goalkeeper and 10 attacking players? No, I think that's right. I think they were really, they were not good building up from the centre-backs yesterday. Dansell on the left,

hasn't worked, I don't think. You know, sometimes he'll try and just kind of almost like do a van de Ven and just drive forward with the ball and out-muscle his opponent. But, like, the only way that Spurs got anything going was by having Bergwijn come all the way back, take the ball off them, turn, drive forward himself. And, you know, Bergwijn's really good and he can be quite good at that. But as soon as you do that, you're coming up against an incredibly organised 11-man AZ team who are in shape. And it's quite clearly...

If you're going to pick your way through that, you need Romero pinging those early low passes through the lines, and they just don't have that. I mean, Bergvall was running with it, but I'm not excusing anybody here, but I think it's ironic that the person who got the own goal was one of the few players, I would say, at least put in a performance that he could say, you know, if I'm not proud of it, at least I'm not ashamed of it. But...

When he was running with the ball through their midfield, and he was beating his man on occasion, it requires either another Bergweld to receive the ball further up the pitch or somebody to be moving. The lack of movement as opposed to passing to static players, it's very frustrating. It would be unforgivable when we're being so frustrated without having, let's do the comedy moment. James, do you think that was a pre-planned free kick or did they make that up on the spot?

They must have done that in training. I mean, not as badly as that, presumably. No, no. I just don't see any way you just kind of riff that in the moment in a big game. I mean, I'm amazed...

I just don't really think that they really shifted the ball far enough to take it beyond the wall. I don't really think they moved the ball into a much better position. Ignoring the fact that they messed it up and couldn't get a proper shot away anyway. Sure, sure. I don't think they'd even really managed to manoeuvre the ball into a good position to get a shot or any better a position than where the free kick was in the first place. So, yeah, I mean, it brought to mind...

I don't know if you remember, in the FA Cup semi-final, I'm going back 24 years now, against Arsenal at Old Trafford. They scored a goal from a free kick that they completely messed up. Stefan Iverson, I think, got a little header off like a mishit shot. So, I mean, maybe that's what they were inspired by. But more likely, it was just training ground nonsense. Just nobody screamed at anybody. And that's another issue. Look, I'm going off tangents here.

Son has been a disastrous captain. He's just not captain. I don't want to come Roy Keane and Jamie Radnack about this. You've got to have someone who's going to... But you can't have somebody who is so introverted when things aren't going well that he becomes himself an example of how we're losing the game. And if you ask me, all right, ask me who's going to be, I'd make Beccario captain in a heartbeat. At least he's waving his arms. Whether or not it's effective or not, I don't know. But you...

In fact, I'd do it for the Bournemouth game. I'll tell you for why, because if you're not, if we just put out another 11, it's as if there's no consequence for what happened in the Netherlands during the week. And there probably isn't, but, you know, what am I expecting? What's in that game? Early in that game, when Spurs were kind of really rocking, maybe in the immediate aftermath of the goal,

there was a passage of play where Spurs kind of played out through the back really, really nicely. It looked like they might lose the ball a couple of times, but they played through really nicely. And in that moment, Danzo was like kind of geeing all the players that way, you know, kind of giving the kind of up, up, up gestures and kind of, you know, like kind of properly, visually trying to kind of gee the players up and give them like a little bit of a kick up the backside. And I don't know, that made me wonder whether he might be someone who...

It could be a future captain at some stage, possibly. But you're right, I mean, that is a... Something there's a real deficit of in that squad, like, kind of...

the obvious visual elements of leadership and you know I'm sure there are things Son does both on the pitch in a game and around the training ground we know he's a wonderful human being the players appreciate that but I do think you probably need more and even if Son is still captain like you need more kind of now I think now says much anything else I think yeah I mean I think the there's been a big leadership and experience problem really for the last two years um

I think they've not... I don't really feel like in that sense they've recovered from losing Lloris, Kane, Dier, Hojbjerg, etc. We've said this quite a few times in this podcast. You know, if you look at the kind of leadership group such as it is, Son...

At the top is the captain, and then you've got Romero, who's the vice-captain, who's played, what, 40% of the Premier League minutes this season. Madison, who has been continually inconsistent this season. And then Vicario, who's obviously, you know, no fault of his own, but he's missed three months, he's just come back in. But I just, I mean, I've never got the impression, I hardly ever got the impression watching Tottenham this season, like,

There was a lot of on-pitch leadership. And I think we kind of, you kind of sense that at the back end of last season when, you know, the players just sort of not gave up, but they sort of lost their, they took their foot off the gas at the back end of last season for one reason or another. And it just kind of felt to me like there wasn't,

there wasn't really much in terms of you know people kind of enforcing standards or enforcing consistency throughout the squad I do wonder whether without kind of this may feel like I'm kind of putting this all at the door of the manager which I don't really mean to do and that would be a bit unfair but I do wonder whether there has been such a sense of the system being like the be all and end all

You can always rely on the system. You can always fall back on the system. Keep playing in this way and everything will work out fine. The players are kind of... Almost everything else kind of wash over them and they've just kind of become a bit complacent to the possibility of those little moments of ingenuity and kind of rolling your sleeves up and doing things a little bit differently when the moment takes. It just feels like there's a real lack of... They're kind of mental problems on the pitch, aren't they? Both in terms of like...

confidence and motivation but also in terms of problem solving I think those things are kind of all linked together I think that's a really really good point I think that they I think a lot of the time in modern football when you get a

If you get a manager who is all about, like, here are my ideas and they are the gospel truth and you guys just have to learn them. And if you learn them and then implement them on the pitch, then we will win. And, you know, a lot of managers talk like that and act like that. But that's basically one extreme of this, one end of the spectrum. And then at the other end of the spectrum, you've got intelligent players making their own decisions on the pitch and doing their own problem solving. And that's the kind of, you know,

I don't know, Mourinho, Ancelotti, like a lot of managers work in that way. But if you go too far on the kind of internalise my playbook model, you do lose a bit of that problem solving, don't you? And I think leadership is a big part of that. Sometimes you need players on the pitch to say, we're going to have to slow things down for five minutes. We're going to have to drop back a

a few yards for a bit. We're going to have to tweak what we do to solve this problem or solve that problem. And we haven't seen that at all from Tottenham for two years. Well, really, I mean, probably for longer than that because Conte was also a kind of you internalise my playbook type manager as well. And, um...

Well, it's very well, Jack, it's very welcome to the players that, isn't it? Because it takes all responsibility away from them. Yeah, maybe it does. They can literally say, I'm stood where I was told to stand in training. All right, I haven't had the ball for 15 minutes and when I have, it's bounced off my shin, but I'm doing what I was told to do. But that is probably one of the results of having a squad of mostly really young players as well.

Like, it's just far less likely to have, like, someone stick their head up and say, well, actually, let's do this. For five minutes, let's do this slightly differently to how we kind of plan to do it on the pitch in the moment. Totally. But I think that they... I think this kind of brings us back to the recruitment point, right? Because the more I think about this season, the more I think one of the... Well, I don't want to, like, argue about the recruitment again. And I do think that Gray and Bergvall were really good signings. And I think Solanke was a really good signing. I just kind of...

The more I think about it, the more I think they needed another one or two players with Premier League experience. And the fact is, we all know that they, you know, we all know that Ange really wanted Conor Gallagher. We all know they've tried really hard to get Jacob Ramsey at the start of the summer. So, but I think, you know, there was a lot of talk about them being interested in Pedro Neto. But I think it's that kind of like more, you know, sort of 23-ish, played a few years in English football,

You know, played probably in all cases like 100 Premier League games or whatever. That kind of player, I think, and I just think the age and experience profile of the squad isn't quite right. There's not enough, there's probably not enough experience on the pitch. There's not enough capacity to solve problems in game. And I think that's one of the many things they really lack this season. I think in that instance, you can look at their recruitment. ♪

Welcome back to another thigh-slapping edition of The View from the Lane. You're listening to me, Danny Kelly, and James Moore, and Jack Pitbrook. Here's another voice, just in case we're wrong about what was going on. Our reporter Elias Burke was at the game, and here's what he had to say. Alcoa is small. It's about 40 minutes from Amsterdam on the train, and easy to get to because the Netherlands has functional and cheap train travel.

I think it's best known for cheese, but it also has a Beatles and Elvis museum, which from a quick Google search, I think it says it has the biggest collection of Beatles memorabilia in the world, which was a surprise, I think. But yeah, nice town centre. The ground's a bit of a pain to get to on foot. I think you kind of either need to approach from a certain way or take a taxi. But yeah, nice town, small. The atmosphere, I mean, like even from earlier on in the day, just being in the town centre, you could tell that it was going to be

good atmosphere. Started with some heavy European dance music to get the fans' blood pumping, but then the singing stand took over, so that was the stand opposite to the Spurs fans. I felt like they were pretty loud all game, but I kind of have a habit of blocking out crowd noise after a while, so I can't be sure. But yeah, they at least started the game in good voice. Yeah, and as for the press conference, definitely

One of the shortest I've ever been in. I think it's not particularly uncommon for Ange to have short press conferences after matches in which they're, you know, disappointing or lose. I think someone in the press conference mentioned, one of the other journalists mentioned that he'd done one maybe after Chelsea earlier on this season that was, was it under two minutes, something like that. So I think this one was three minutes or about three minutes. So yeah, obviously very, very short, but

wasn't really in the chattiest mood either um so i'm not sure there's much more that we would have gotten out of him if we were given you know another few minutes well thanks to elias for that um jack what's the shortest press conference you've ever experienced i it might even be the conte the conte southampton one the one um that was definitely i mean that was a post-match press conference so it's different that that wasn't that didn't feel very long um

That was a pre-prepared statement, wasn't it? And off he went. Yeah. I remember Tony Pulis always used to come in and do his post-match press conferences standing up as a kind of... Which I think was always good for encouraging people. For basically sending the message, look, let's make this as quick as possible. So he would walk in, stand up, and then you'd get a series of one, two sentence answers, and then he'd be gone. So Pulis would often be in and out in a minute or two. I think we have to address...

the elephant in the room. Let's assume, let's assume that Spurs are not going to change their manager mid-season. What would be the point now, you could almost argue. What's the mood around Postacog? Do you think now, Jack, the road has been, I think, relatively...

bumpy for him insofar as you know the injuries gave him a perfectly good and I think a very adequate reason why the team wasn't performing other things came into it but gradually those things seem to be falling away now that the plates of armor are falling away and I know there are other people who are involved recruitment Levy all the rest of it but he now stands a little bit exposed doesn't he yeah it's weird isn't it because like I said earlier like

But it's completely unquestionable that they would have been better with Solanke, Kuliseski, Van de Ven and Romero starting yesterday. They're Spurs' best players. But talking to Spurs fans last night, I feel like people's patience for that argument is running out. And I definitely feel like there's a bit of a vibe shift against the manager. So a lot of people, a lot of fans who I speak to, who were previously very Ange sympathetic, are now a bit more...

they're kind of giving up the fight a bit. I think they are accepting that as much as they want this to work and as much as they might like the manager and like his ideas and wanted him to have been a success at Tottenham, I think they're, you know, I think for a lot of fans there comes a point where you have to say this hasn't worked. Maybe it's time to try something different. And so I think that the

I think even though there is, you know, there's a lot of acceptance about the injuries and acceptance about the wage bill and the recruitment and all the rest of it. I think even like through all people are kind of cutting through a lot of that context and saying we accept all of that. But maybe maybe Posse Coglu is not the right manager for next season.

That's my reading of what people think. James, as a bloke, I've got, you know, except for occasional spats with journalists, I've got no problem with him. I winced when he mentioned the state of the pitch. I wish he hadn't done that. Yeah, I think that's fair enough. I mean, I think it's probably also not necessarily an entirely unfair complaint. But I wonder whether it's one you really want to be making off the back of a performance like that where clearly it wasn't the only issue.

But I mean, in the bigger picture, I mean, I think we've said this a couple of times, it's this feeling that there are fewer and fewer reasons to feel this is going to work in the longer term, I think. And I think I said at the start of the week or last week, his longer term future wouldn't necessarily be determined entirely by how they do in this competition. But if they go out to Alkmaar, particularly after that first leg performance, I mean, I don't really see that he's going to have them.

It's not going to have really a leg to stand on after that, I don't think. It's very hard to see a situation where there's much patience for that. I think a lot of fans have been willing to...

suspend judgement on Postakoglu this season for good and admirable reasons. They've said, like, we've got... There's this terrible injury crisis. Let's wait for the players to come back. Yeah, they're not doing well in the league. Let's wait and see how they do. Can they get to the League Cup final? Can they have an FA Cup run? Can they do well in the Europa League? Can they get to Bilbao? And so lots of people, I think, have been really, really patient through the course of this,

But I think now that it looks like they're probably not going to end up in Bilbao, because even if they get through, if they play like they did last night... We have to cancel our ferries, yeah. Ajax are like 17 points ahead of AZ in the Eredivisie. Frankfurt are third in the Bundesliga. If Tottenham would not beat those teams...

So they're probably not going to win the Europa League. And in the Premier League, you know, if you look at like the Opta supercomputer, they're probably going to finish 13th or 14th. And so I think a lot of that suspended judgment is going to get called in. You know, people will unsuspend their judgment. They will take a view at the end of the season. And I just think if they are finishing 13th or 14th and they haven't done anything in the Cups, then I think...

ultimately the people will kind of put the mitigating factors to one side and say it's been a very bad season I've got to say by the way I think this game on Sunday I know we'll come on to it in a minute I think this this is the worst game for him almost I just feel like the optics of losing that game to the manager that seems to be many people's first choice as a possible replacement for Postacoglu in Areola would just be really really bad uh

I actually mean Bournemouth's recent form isn't incredibly good they got through their FA Cup tie against Wolves on penalties last weekend but they lost their two Premier League games before that one of them against Wolves at home the other at Brighton and I think they lost three of the last five in the league so they have kind of dropped off a little bit a few weeks ago it did look like they had like a really good chance of getting into the Champions League and now that maybe looks slightly less likely but I mean

They've got a very good chance of getting into Europe, which is Bournemouth we're talking about. So clearly this guy's done a good job. They've got a lot of good players as well. I mean, I don't think many people are going to have great confidence for this game from a Spurs perspective. And I mean, having seen the manager rotate players out for a league game with a week's run up to the first leg, I'd be very, very surprised if he didn't leave a few out again here. And then I don't know...

what that leaves you with again as we've said with kind of four or five players out you know maybe Van de Ven or Romero will play in this game and that may kind of bolster things a bit but you know if Timo Werner Bissouma are coming into the team I'm not necessarily convinced that's going to strengthen things greatly yeah and you know Bournemouth again won't have played since last weekend which may play into their favour I don't know

There's just kind of alarm bells going there for me that this may not be a great one for Spurs. Can we stop this thing about not playing? Spurs hadn't played for eight days. Altmar have played three times in that time. Can we stop this? You either have commitment to the cause, you either have intensity or you don't. You can still be tired. You can lose the game and you can be fatigued.

but some of it is your starting point. What is your starting point in all this? Jack, what would you do with the team? Because I think he's got to rest players, but in some ways there's an argument he's got to, the ones who are on the, particularly Romero and Van de Ven, he almost has to start them against Bournemouth, otherwise he can't start them against Altmar. Yeah.

Yeah, it's difficult, isn't it? I don't really know. I don't have a good answer. I don't think he's got many good answers. You've got an excuse. You're on painkillers. That's the difference. I don't think he's got many good options. I think James is really right. I think the possibility that they get battered would obviously be really, really bad for him, even though ultimately I think Thursday will have a bigger bearing on

I kind of agree with you. I think it's weird because if you had one centre-back coming back from an injury, you could maybe play them for a half, in the way that Van de Ven played the half against Ellsborg, for example, before coming off. It would be really weird to play Van de Ven and Romero and then take them both off at half-time for Danso and Gray or whatever. So maybe...

I don't know. I'm literally making this up. And I am no expert on strength and conditioning coaching. No, but also, you know... I don't know. Maybe it would make sense to play one of them for a bit and then maybe play the other one for the second half. But I agree. I think they both need a bit of legs in their minutes. Minutes in their legs ahead of Thursday because I think they probably have to play on next Thursday.

I think Spurs are not good enough to win without them in whatever condition they're in. I mean, your confusion, Jack, given that you are not the stupidest person I've ever met, is based on the simple fact that there's just so many problems to solve at any given time. But they have to play this Bournemouth fixture. I'll tell you who should play. I'll tell you who should play.

Dane Scarlett. Dane Scarlett should start up front. There you go. Yeah, I agree with that. I don't think Odobeer should play. Yes. Odobeer is their best attacking player and I don't care how little he's played. He just is. Odobeer should play and Scarlett. Would you play more? You might as well. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, why not? If they're a success, you can repeat it against the opposition four or five days later. If they turn out that they're also weeds, you've lost nothing. You've just...

double the amount of weeds you can select up front. Or you could play tell out or you could play, I mean, I agree with James that Scarlett should play. You could play Scarlett up front so you could maybe play tell in a more natural position. Yeah, that's not a bad shot either. I mean, I know he's trying, but he's just not a nine. Like, weirdly, I think the Spurs, I always think that Odd Bear...

I don't know how Odder Bear and Tell both fit together. Could you have Odder Bear and Tell either side of Scarlet? I don't feel like... We're sort of playing fantasy football here, but we've got a lot to lose now, really, isn't it? I mean, I just don't see that could be any worse than what we saw from that three that played last night. Listen, as well as thanking everyone for listening to what is always a tricky listen when you've had a performance like that, thanks to James and Jack for trying to...

you know, analyse forensically the guts of what was, you know, we're becoming like police investigators. We're looking at poking at corpses sometimes of that performance. And hopefully something will rise up against Bournemouth, hopefully against Altmar as well. Listen, thanks for listening. The best coverage.

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