Having fought back from the brink twice in four days, it is fair to say that the fighting spirit that Tottenham so desperately lacked in last week’s humiliation has been restored under Ryan Mason. All that has done is serve to highlight the more profound issue that the next Spurs head coach will have to address. This is a team that simply cannot defend.
What Jose Mourinho, Nuno Espirito Santo and Antonio Conte — three head coaches who might list organizing a defense among their greatest qualities — have bequeathed their Tottenham successors is a team that fails to do the basics whatever the system, that combines individual errors with systemic flaws to forge a defense that can allow opponents to score three on them in 15 minutes once a week.
There was much misfortune in the way in which Tottenham lost this seven-goal thriller, a heavy touch from Lucas Moura teeing up Diogo Jota for the winner 99 seconds after Richarlison’s first Premier League goal had seemingly sealed the comeback. Then again, this was a team that had invited Liverpool’s array of attacking superstars to go at them all day long. As they chased an unlikely draw, you could forgive the spaces that were left behind them but this is the price of defensive ineptitude.
The bar Tottenham have been setting for themselves of late is low enough that a cobra might consider it a tight squeeze. This is a team who, without the ball, are not even on nodding terms with the basics of their sport. In a back four or a back five, their appreciation of space is atrocious, there is absolutely no trigger that can give them the impetus to press up the field in an attempt to win the ball back. That would be reasonable if they fought with rabidity when the ball approached their final third. Nothing of the sort. There is a laziness to the way in which Cristian Romero in particular defends, always looking for the easy way out, relying on his physicality…
