Sissoko came on and did more more in 20 minutes than Eriksen, Alli, Kane, Dembele or Wanyama managed all game...and three of those stayed on the pitch for the full 90. Yet, he gets slated here by otherwise erudite posters like
@90291Spur,
@scaramanga and others.
C'est la vie, I suppose. Personally, I thought he tried harder and did more than a lot of our sacred cows in the starting eleven - he looked like a much better player than all of them to boot, which should appall Eriksen, Alli, Kane and co.
Difficult to describe our performance, really. It was turgid, listless, utterly abject...United were bang average and we made them look like world-beaters, while we couldn't control the simplest passes and turned every simple pass into some Herculean labor just to retain possession. It was almost comical to watch our collection of supposedly Premier League level footballers control the ball and move like drunken OAPs after a fry-up the night before.
We were beaten, and deserved to lose by a lot more. Kane was abjectly awful, Alli and Eriksen likewise. Wanyama did little of note save for missing that glorious chance from the free-kick. Toby and Jan were alright, Rose and Walker were miserably bad.
I don't know if Poch got out-coached by Mourinho, but his team was simply brushed aside by a United side which struggled against bloody Everton and the like but looked eminently comfortable today..*after* playing Zorya Luhansk away at midweek. While we couldn't manage 5 minutes of energy after not leaving London for the past two-odd weeks.
Just a pathetic game from us all round, really. And that leads to what I said prior to the game...
@alekaras , We. Do. Not. Handle. Crunch. Moments. Well. When even the tiniest bit of pressure is applied to us, or expectations placed on us, or opportunities given to us, we fold like a pack of cards and expose our innate submissiveness and spineless nature for all to see. This transcends managers and teams, this is a thread running through the spine of our club that only superhuman efforts can dispel. You said last season was last season - against Chelsea and now, we proved that last season is this season, as far as dealing with crunch moments is concerned.
It's why I *hate* Walker and co. coming out and talking about how they can 'handle' the pressure, because they can't. They never have been able to, and they never will. We do our best work when nobody notices. Pochettino has not changed this, despite what his more ardent admirers would have you believe. Nothing earth-shattering has changed in our mentality from Harry's days down to today - the only differences are small and game-by-game, not a substantive change of our ethos. Poch has made some improvements, but he hasn't changed the underlying character of Tottenham Hotspur at all yet - and that yawning collapse last season deserves to be more acutely remembered given how we're still folding in crunch situations. As we folded today.
Sigh. I suppose I should have seen it coming the moment City lost and we had an opportunity to head into the top four - we would blow it, and royally so. And so we did.
Next time, let's just shut the f*ck up and work out of the spotlight. This team cannot handle pressure at all.
