NEWSFLASH! Nothing has changed
Missing in Action: Creativity, Drive and Fluidness
Sunderland 1 Spurs 0
Hardly any shots on goal. No creativity. No dominating possession play. Two shots on goal. Gutless last 5 minutes. 93rd minute home goal.
The whole summer spent waiting for this day, and it feels like having your head pushed down the toilet and flushed.
Elsewhere, Newcastle destroyed Bolton in the first half. City started life under Sven with a bang, and that Petrov bloke doesn't look half bad. Its a depressing way to start the season. Take note of the fact that Newcastle were 3-0 up inside 29 minutes. Where was the urgency from the us today? Stuck on the fucking motorway, obviously.
5th spot is not guaranteed. Other clubs have done enough to warrant competition and have displayed that hope in the form of an opening day win. Unlike us. These are the games and points that are the final difference at the end of the season. Eight points adrift of Arsenal last term because of displays like this.
Right, and onwards to today's performance review.
This game had 0-0 written all over it, and yet we some how dug deep enough to allow Sunderland to nick it at its very death. To be quite frank, we deserved nothing more. Would Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool leave the Stadium of Light with zero points? I doubt it very fucking much.
Sunderland were ineffective, yet that's obviously not enough for us to take some kind of advantage. How many times are we going to persist in giving away points in the final seconds?
I don't accept any excuse for this performance, and how tragic for our fans to travel all the way up there to witness a bland average display of football. But then that's what happens when you spend £40M on reserve players.
Midfield was pedestrian. Zokora running into people with the ball. Jenas, utterly embarrassing. No defence splitting passes no slick counter-attacks.
The midfield starved the forward line-up. The defence only had Kaboul as the positive, and in fact, was our best player. Even looked superb going forward. Gardner has me sitting with my heart in my mouth, chewing it like a fruit pastel.
Jenas. Got to come back to him again. What was any different to his performance today as the one given by Ghaly in the infamous 'subbed sub shirt throwing' game of last season? JJ was wasteful, sideways and played akin to a porn star in a gang-bang flick who's lost his penis to leprosy and instead had a feather strapped to his groin. Jermaine Feathercock: Impossible to penetrate, tickling tackle and a touch that makes everyone laugh.
Zokora was even worse than Jenas.
Four central midfielders lining up in midfield. I'm gonna state this a few times in this blog entry, but how many times are we going to question Jol's selection....again?And if someone cries out 'injuries' - then why not bring in (buy) players that give us depth in positions rather than depth in one position.
Berbatov. Keane. Bent. Defoe. All on the pitch at one time. All doing nothing to appease me or the travelling fans. But maybe that's more to do with the lack of spark from the middle four. Berbatov looked furious when he was replaced. And so he should be. With himself and his team mates. But he should have been left on regardless. Jol, obviously not knowing what to do with four big-name strikers, wanting to try all of them out. Bit naive that. As shit as Berbs was, he can still muster something up. More so than the four stuck in the middle of the park.
Am I knee-jerking? Of course I fucking am. There's nothing else to do.
Spurs hardly ever win their opening game of the season, but as I stated in my preview, its no time to spend dwelling on the past under-achievements as the standard benchmark of excuses. It should be about living up to the hype. And yet we give the world, live on TV, a quintessential flop of a display.
Jol called the performance 'disappointing' and 'boring'. No shit sherlock. What are you gonna do about it for next time? I await to see how the players and manager react at home against Everton on Tuesday. And I have suddenly got déjà vu. Last season started in similar fashion, utterly underwhelming.
And what would I have done? Played Taarabt. Maybe he wasn't fit, but the game was crying out for a player with his type of quality. Unlike the quality of Huddlestone, who should not have been subbed on by Jol. He can't settle into a game with 4 minutes left, and that was proved in those four minutes with some poor touches and giving away freekicks. And this shows how bad things are in practice. Wishing we had an 18 year old available to select. Where is the imagination? Why have we failed to purchase width and a true world class central midfielder?
Tuesday, against Everton. Second game in. Must win.
I could rant about this forever. Where's my medication?
Kick up the backside we deserved, I'm sure is what people will comfort themselves with. I'm going to comfort myself with some Absinthe and a £200-per-hour hooker. I'll fucking show those over-paid gits how to stick it in.
