Jose’s Spurs cannot get over the line

JOSE MOURINHO thought Tottenham played well. And he had a point, literally. They weren’t awful. They were just what we have come to expect from Tottenham, especially without Harry Kane. They were technically nice, pretty at times and fairly ineffective.

Some nuance should be added at this point. To frame the analysis just in Spurs’ failings would be to do a disservice to Nigel Pearson and Watford, more of which later. And we should consider the fact that Spurs were 10.04mm short of winning. And winning changes everything, especially the perspective of a match report.

So we could be discussing how this side had the character to grind out wins in difficult circumstances had Erik Lamela’s injury-time touch not been hooked off the line by Watford’s new signing Ignacio Pussetto.

And given that Pussetto had only come on in the 89th minute, it was a mightily significant intervention for the Argentine to make in a very short space of time. But goalline technology is the one innovation no one objects to in the game.

‘It is the technology that I love and respect,’ said Mourinho, he who coined the phrase ‘ghost goal’. On this one we can all agree: it’s either in or it isn’t and it wasn’t.

Instead, we’re talking about a Tottenham side who have won once in six Premier League games and haven’t scored in three. There is some obvious mitigation.

‘I promised that I didn’t want to speak about the boys that are not [playing],’ said Mourinho. ‘But you know how important they are for us. I’m not saying that we would win. But it’s the kind of game where [if] you have a guy that smells goals, probably you win it. It’s injuries, it’s the Christian [Eriksen] situation. We have our problems but in the game today I think we showed good things. I’m happy with lots of things we did in these last games.’

For once this isn’t actually all about Mourinho. Take Tottenham’s record over the past 12 months. Of their past 38 games, they have won 14, drawn 9 and lost 15. That would bring you 51 points. Midtable mediocrity.

This was recently a great team. Remember Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid at Wembley? Remember the exhilaration of taking apart Pep Guardiola in his first season or Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool just over two years ago? That was football at its best. The year-long decline was obscured by the euphoria of getting into their magnificent new stadium and reaching the Champions League final. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Daniel Levy’s eagle-eyed focus was on the new White Hart Lane when this team, as Mauricio Pochettino told him, was in desperate need of an overhaul.

Eriksen will go but, having missed their chance to sell, not for the kind of money that will help with a rebuild. Kane is injured but then, with Fernando Llorente leaving, why no alternative? Danny Rose was carrying an injury so not involved here, but there’s another potential transfer saga seemingly without end. We could go on. Tottenham have done much right in the past five years. Now they’re clinging on to their new-found status as London’s No1 club. It was a long struggle to get there. They risk sliding off the summit the moment they reached the top of the mountain.

Tottenham were only really decent in the opening and closing exchanges. They were unlucky in that Michael Oliver overlooked a high foot from Etienne Capoue on Japhet Tanganga, which should have been a yellow card. So when Capoue then took out Giovani Lo Celso on 38 minutes with an awful sliding tackle, he should have been receiving a second yellow and a red. But Tottenham were largely confined to ineffective shots from outside the box. There was one moment on 38 minutes, when Dele Alli found an incisive pass to play in Lucas Moura, but Ben Foster came out to smother the shot.

So maybe Tottenham were poor. But Watford were very good. They bear the mark of Pearson. There is more use of the long throw, less worrying about playing out from the back and a clear back four with two players to shield them. It’s pretty hard to break down. That’s six games without defeat and another clean sheet. It might have been more, but for captain Troy Deeney’s penalty miss.

Come the second half, Pearson was on the front foot and the