SPURS MUST FIND THEIR DRIVE
THERE is something not quite right at Tottenham at the moment. They fought well on Saturday to beat Southampton 2-1 with 10 men but this just does not look like the Mauricio Pochettino sides of old.
I don’t agree with Harry Kane’s assertion after the game that the squad have been distracted by the transfer window. It’s hardly the first window they’ve been through.
I just think there are a lot of unsettled players at Tottenham at the moment. Perhaps they feel uneasy about contract situations and players perhaps being moved on but there are a lot of players there that don’t look happy.
One thing I’ve loved about Spurs in the last few years is their energy under Pochettino. They were always high-tempo, high-pressing but they seem to have lost that drive this season. They have to get that back if they are to scale the heights of the last few years.
Usually with a Pochettino team it feels like there can never be any sloppiness because if the players made any mistakes, they would not be in the team any more. They would not just outplay teams, they would outwork them too. But that looks to have gone now.
I don’t think it is necessarily a hangover effect from their run to the Champions League final last season. They brought in a few players but it still feels like they do not have the luxury of being able to freshen up their starting XI each week. Record signing Tanguy Ndombele is starting to click and it was great to see him score again.
They were badly let down by errors from Serge Aurier and Hugo Lloris on Saturday and Lloris in particular is a worry. In the last year the Frenchman has made a few mistakes you wouldn’t expect from him.
But he is a World Cup winner, a fantastic goalkeeper and also the club captain, so it would be extremely difficult to think about leaving him out of the team.
One thing they are missing is creativity. Unless Christian Eriksen is playing, you really wonder where their ability to unlock defences is going to come from. Giovani Lo Celso, who joined this summer on loan from Real Betis, was supposed to help Eriksen with the creative burden and they need the Argentine back from his hip injury as soon as possible. When you need to unlock teams, you need that player who can do something special.
They have, however, put together back-to-back home wins and that’s important, because the new stadium has to become a fortress.
They welcome Bayern Munich to north London in the Champions League tomorrow night and that is a huge game for them. They need a statement win to get the new stadium back to the atmosphere they had at White Hart Lane.
They have the quality. Now it’s time to rediscover their drive.