Epic Fail
Spurs 1 Aston Villa 2
What a shambles. I can't even be arsed to dwell too much on this miserable evening, so I'll stick to the main points.
We have three games in the space of a week. Villa, some Polish side and then Wigan on Sunday. So, what does Ramos do? He selects a disjointed and weakened side in arguably our toughest game of the three. Bentley dropped to the Bench, King rested completely. And selecting Huddlestone and Dawson to play against the pace and movement of Villa was a monumental fuck up. Not helped by a typical Zokora display of complete non-existence, we sat back and watched Villa out run us, out move us, out pace us - the lot. Embarrassing.
Even when we did start to play possession football deep into the second half, there was still no end product. In fact the only person attempting end product is the one person who has no end product. Lennon.
The first Villa goal was scored when Huddlestone lost his man. The second, I'm not going to dwell on Gomes allowing the ball to slip under him. Gomes in the first half saved us from going into the dressing room at half-time, 4-0 down. Dawson was at fault for this one. That shot should never have been fired towards goal.
I didn't see Bent's consolation. I was already on my way out.
4 played, one draw, three defeats - two of them at home. Had we played a full strength team, I'm uncertain if the result would have been any different.
Now, you could argue losing Berbatov and Keane isn't something we are going to recover from in a handful of games. But you could also argue, that if Levy, Comolli and Ramos have been assembling this squad since the start of the summer, then resting players shouldn't result in such a shambolic performance. All tonight illustrates is that there is no true depth - which means, play the strongest side possible when a win is most needed. What we get instead is glue, sticking us to the bottom of the league.
Huddlestone should only be used as an impact sub on current form and mobility. Dawson if everyone else is injured. Zokora's over-hyped performance at Chelsea masked his deficiencies once more, for all of 5 minutes, before it dawned on the faithful that he is in fact fucking gush. At least young Gio gave us some hope.
Poor Pav, upfront - running into space and behind defenders waiting for a ball that will never arrive. Again, its unfair to be critical of either Pav or Bent. At the moment they look too similar to be playing together - but they do need time to gel (or attempt to do so). So surely tactically, something should have been agreed upon, because if the tactic was hoofing the ball for someone to get their head on it and for someone else to run onto it, then fuck are we fucked.
I'm back at White Hart Pain on Thursday for more comedy. I live the life of a fucking king, I do.
~ Spooky
