A Tale of Two Hugos

Spurs Women and Men both lose at home on a very disappointing weekend for the club | Previewing the penultimate CL group stage game

I don't think I have to tell y'all that this weekend was a painful one to be a Spurs fan. You know. You lived it. I guess we have to relive it again briefly in service of this recap, but I promise I won't linger too long.

Tottenham 0 - 3 Manchester City

The Women got us off to a very early start on Saturday at Brisbane Road. Am I still a little salty about waking up before dawn to watch such a disappointing match? Yes. But going into the game, I did have some hope we could pull off a result, so of course I dragged myself out of bed and consumed copious amounts of caffeine to get through it anyway.

Most of that hope was promptly dashed when Ellie Brazil, who was getting her first WSL start for Spurs, was injured after just a couple of minutes. City keeper Ellie Roebuck dawdled on the ball and gave our Ellie a chance to challenge for the ball in the box, but the resulting knocking of legs left the Tottenham player worse for the wear. How much worse we don't yet know officially, but she had to be stretchered off with her leg braced, so it doesn't look good. I can't think of a worse way for the match to have started. It's crushing to see Ellie hurt when she had just recently recovered from another injury and was hoping to kick on and have a breakout season, maybe even earn herself a call-up to the England squad. That's all looking rather unlikely now unless this was one of the rare cases where the injury looked worse than it actually was.

It's not that the rest of the team didn't give it a good go after Ellie's injury, but they were definitely affected by it. And you can't blame them, considering the team was already in an injury crisis. I've spoken about it several times already and won't belabor the point, but some questions do have to be asked regarding how we got into this dire of a squad situation so early in the season. It can't all be down to bad luck—though that is certainly an element.

Jess Naz, who is still not fully fit after her own recent injury, had to come in for Ellie and essentially play the whole 90. Since I first became a Spurs Women fan Jess has been one of my favorite players to watch, but she was lacking her usual spark in this game. It could be that the way the match played out didn't suit her skillset, but I do think she is lacking some confidence at the moment. It's unlike her to be so slow to react in meeting passes and making her runs, but for the majority of the game, she seemed to be one second behind the ball—and City weren't affording us much time on the ball to begin with.

Truthfully, we were still in the game at halftime. Although we didn't offer much going forward, the defense had been quite strong in the first half and limited City to one goal, a Khadija "Bunny" Shaw header off a set piece just before halftime. Unfortunately, Shaw then completed her brace on the other side of halftime and the possibility of earning a point then seemed dauntingly out of reach. She's a striker who is so efficient and in form that you can't afford to give her even a half chance. The defense continued to limit the damage as best they could, with Amy Turner putting in a steely performance against City's winger Lauren Hemp, but the Euros star scored City's third and final goal in the 76th minute after finally getting the best of our right back.

Spurs ended the match with zero shots on target, though Turner did manage one saved effort off a free kick that was also offside. We didn't even win a corner kick until the 70th minute, just to put our lack of possession in the final third in context. There was one nice attacking moment just before said corner when a tidy pass into the box from Eveliina Summanen missed connecting with Ash Neville by mere inches. I would have loved to see Ash score on her 50th WSL appearance for Spurs.

It also didn't help that our new striker, Nikola Karczewska, is still on limited minutes at the moment and wasn't able to feature until the last five minutes of the game. We lacked her presence as a focal point in the attack since Jess is more comfortable as a wide player. The only other sub of the game was the long-awaited return of Chioma Ubogagu. It wasn't enough time for her to make an impact, but I was glad to see her intensity was high and it was good for her to get at least a few minutes of match experience after such a long absence from the game. She will definitely need to feature more frequently in the coming matches.

It's hard to say that anyone played truly well, but I do want to highlight Asmita Ale once again. She was consistently the only player looking to start an attacking movement or pick out a progressive pass. She's also been doing a good job of winning her duels, so she is contributing defensively, too.

On a non-team-specific note: are WSL clubs and officials ever going to get serious about concussion protocol? I couldn't believe Bunny Shaw was allowed to continue after taking a header straight to the face from close range. City even made a show of readying Mary Fowler (who would surely appreciate the minutes) for a substitution but didn't end up making the change until much later. Baffling.

The good news for Spurs is that unlike some of the other WSL teams, we don't have a midweek Conti Cup match to deal with (thanks to the luck of landing in a four-team group rather than a five-team group). Next up on the fixture schedule is an away match at Brighton. It's a winnable fixture for sure, since Brighton haven't had the best start to the season, but I'll preview that matchup in Thursday's issue.

Tottenham 1 - 2 Newcastle

The Men also had a disappointing result, though a draw was a much more realistic possibility for them up until the final whistle.

Ironically, it was in our better half of football that we conceded the two goals to Newcastle, and didn't score ourselves until the much less consistent second half. Newcastle's 0-2 lead at halftime felt very much against the run of play. Son in particular had a few chances early on that on another day he may have converted, and we could have been looking at a very different scoreline going into the break.

And whereas I spent the last issue praising Hugo Lloris for his strong effort in an otherwise terrible team performance, I can't give him much credit this time. He was directly involved in both goal concessions. Callum Wilson's goal in the 31st minute never would have happened if Hugo had cleared the ball rather than trying to bring it under control, giving the much more physical Wilson a chance to body it off of him. I understand the arguments for disallowing the goal (Wilson wasn't making a play on the ball when he made contact, and he did put an arm across Hugo to impede him), but again, Hugo's initial error made him culpable. And then it was a misplaced pass out of the back from our captain that led to Miguel Almirón's game-winning goal in the 40th minute. Ryan Sessegnon and Clément Lenglet also could have done better on this defensive play, but Hugo put them in a bad position to begin with.

It's concerning to see so many errors across the defense in the last few weeks, from Eric Dier's error in the Frankfurt match to the general frailty of the backline against Manchester United, and now Hugo going from masterclass to disasterclass in the span of two games. Those errors prove to be too costly in games like the last two where we aren't creating enough going forward to outweigh the conceded goals with goals of our own.

On a positive note, Harry Kane has been a lone case of goal-scoring consistency for Spurs this season. He scored a very classic Kane goal in the 54th minute off a flicked-on corner kick. However, if the ball had not come off Sven Botman and had instead made contact with Davinson Sánchez on the way down to Kane's waiting head, it may have been disallowed for offside. At least the one goal scored limited the damage to the team's overall goal difference.

It was also nice to see Oliver Skipp get his first start since January. I thought he played quite well and will surely be trusted with some more significant minutes during this last stretch of fixture congestion before the World Cup. He was limited to 66 minutes of play on this occasion, though.

Much like the Women's team, the Men are in a bit of an injury crisis. Both managers are hampered in what they can do to adjust tactically mid-game with such limited benches. I had to force myself to recognize this and not go into a full-blown meltdown over the weekend's results, because I was definitely tempted in the moment. That's the thing about having #OneClub; some weeks you get double the joy, and other weeks you get double the pain. There will be good times again soon.

A chance to clinch

The Men's team does get a chance to bounce back immediately in a midweek match, the home fixture against Sporting CP in the Champions League group stage. A win will see Spurs advance to the knockout round, and a win coupled with a Marseille loss at Frankfurt would see us clinch top of the group. Things were feeling dire a few weeks ago after the loss at Sporting, so that just goes to show how quickly fortunes can change in football.

We were lucky to avoid a goal from Marcus Edwards in the away fixture, so the defense will need to work hard to contain him this time. Luckily, one of the players that provided an assist in the away game is suspended for this match (Pedro Gonçalves), along with Ricardo Esgaio, both for yellow card accumulation. On our side, we are still down two key attacking players in Dejan Kulusevski and Richarlison.

The 3-5-2 formation has had some growing pains but is still the most likely starting formation with the players Conte has available—unless he makes the (foolish) decision to give Lucas Moura a start in a 3-4-3. I would be happy to see Skipp get another start to build up some momentum, and give Pierre-Emile Højbjerg the extended rest he's needed for, well, seasons now. The wingback pairing continues to be a conundrum, especially since Sessegnon had a somewhat shaky game against Newcastle and Perišić looked quite bright when he came on a sub—albiet a little selfish in a crucial moment. On the other side of the pitch, it's more a question of rotation between competitions; I think Doherty is better suited to the Premier League games than Emerson Royal, but we'll see if Conte agrees.

The team will definitely be motivated to get a win, not only to secure advancement in the competition but also to get some personal revenge on the frustrating loss to Sporting last month. It's the kind of game with important stakes that is good to have coming up next when the club is in a disappointing run of form that needs correcting. Hopefully we take this chance to get back on track and give ourselves some breathing room in the last CL fixture against Marseille next week.

COYS

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