Double Defeat

Not a good day of results for Tottenham Hotspur FC all around, but with varying implications for the Men's and Women's teams.

We got the disappointment started early with Spurs Women's 0-3 away loss to Manchester United. I can't sugarcoat it; this was a bad performance from our Lilywhites. The normally stalwart defense was shaky, and we could hardly get anything going in the attack, rarely challenging their keeper. United played us off the pitch, basically.

If I had to pinpoint our biggest issue on the day, it was the midfield. Clemaron was having an uncharacteristically scattershot performance, and a lot of our pressing tends to run through her, so when she's having an off night, so goes the rest of the team. Ayane was also ineffective, and I think a lot of her problems came down to a lack of physicality (she can best be described as wispy, bless her).

As for the bright spots, Zadorksy was one of the few highlights in the defense, Neville put in her usual brave shift, and Naz had a few promising moments on the counter-attack and nearly scored. Rachel Williams had our only other quality chance at goal, sending a header just wide of the post. I do think Rehanne would do well to give Addison a start soon because she's put it in some confident and spirited performances in her last few substitution appearances. She could be just what the team needs to freshen up the attack.

On another lineup note, we could only muster a five-woman bench, mostly due to absences for the Women's Asian Cup. More curious was the exclusion of Ubogagu from the squad; I hadn't heard any injury news on her, but I also hadn't clocked that she was out of the squad for the midweek cup match too. Hopefully it is just an injury concern and not a manager's discretion kind of situation, because although she was certainly at fault in the buildup to West Ham's equalizer last weekend, she's shown enough potential previously to not be written off for one error. But I'm probably reading too much into it now... which I wouldn't be able to do if the club would just provide timely injury reports 😉. Anyway, to my original point, the sparse bench didn't give us a lot of options to impact the game. I'm sure this was a mental factor for the team going into the match, with the starters knowing they couldn't count on much reinforcement. However, we did see the WSL debut of Izzy Lane late in the game, on a positive note. I'm sure she will wish it had been in a match with a better result, but she has a bright future and clearly has a vote of confidence from Rehanne.

Unfortunately, this match kind of was a must-win in the context of our top 3 pursuit. Man United now have a three-point gap on Spurs, not to mention their 12-goal advantage. Not ideal. But there is at least the silver lining that Arsenal and City had a 1-1 draw, so City remain one point below us, with the same amount of matches played. So if we can just keep City there somehow and make up the ground on United... There's not a lot of margin for error, admittedly. But, you know--to dare is to do.

Starting on Sunday, we have two cup matches in five days. Up first is the FA Cup home match against Leicester, which is imminently winnable, and then the much more formidable Man City away match in the League Cup semi-final. Let's all just hope that we don't pick up any injuries, what with the players missing for the WAC tournament, because after the cups we go right back into WSL action. I haven't seen any news yet on where/if the FA Cup match is being broadcast, but we have gotten confirmation that the Conti Cup semi-final will be available on the FA Player.

Speaking of the Asian Cup, all of our Spurs players are comporting themselves well. Simon scored two goals in Australia's first group stage match (an 18-0 thrashing of Indonesia) and another in their second match, while Tang made a sub appearance in China PR's first match then scored twice in their second match. Cho featured as a starter for South Korea's first match (the only game I've been able to catch so far due to time zones), and played very well, unlucky not to register an assist after one particularly well-placed pass, but did get an assist in their second match, which she also started. There's a clear gulf in quality between the teams like our Spurs players' countries and some of the countries whose teams have had less development (read:  investment), and the host nation, India, sadly had to drop out of the competition due to suffering 13 COVID cases in their squad. Still, this is a good opportunity for Simon and Tang to build up some confidence, and Cho has been a key part of her country's squad for years. Depending on how far they get in the tournament, our players won't be gone any longer than the February 6 final.

For a final note for the Women's team, I am eager to see when Eveliina Summanen is going to get her first appearance! And I am also crossing my fingers that we make one more signing, a forward.

Chelsea strikes again

May as well kick things off for the Men's section of the newsletter with this nightmare of an Instagram Story from Lo Celso:

Yikes, yikes, yikes! Gio is of course alluding to the fact that he was dropped entirely from the squad for the Chelsea away match, along with Dele and the now thoroughly out-of-favor Ndombele. Dele also got involved with some social media nonsense, sharing a completely irrelevant animal meme... thing... (idk I'm old and I think this was maybe on TikTok, which I don't use at all) right around halftime, so that would seem to imply how much he cared about the result. Major bummer vibes, my dudes. And just not a good look, frankly.

But I don't think the players who were included in the squad today were distracted by their exiled teammates' shenanigans, because although it wasn't a great performance by any means, it wasn't one of those derbies where there seemed to be a noticeable lack of effort across the board, like we saw in the London derbies in the first half of the season. So thank goodness for that. Conte continues to praise the commitment of the players even in bad results, so I'm glad they are repaying his trust on the pitch. We simply got outplayed by Chelsea today, a thing that happens, particularly when Conte's hand is forced to experiment with a new formation because of personnel availability and learnings from the previous Chelsea matchups.

Plus, I didn't consider this one of our "must-win" matches. When we play West Ham, Man United, and Arsenal again--those are must-wins! This was just a "would have been nice to win." Because chances are, our top 4 rivals will also struggle against Chelsea and drop points. Everything will be fine as long as we stay focused on the true task.

As alluded to earlier, Conte switched things up for the starting lineup with a 4-4-2 formation. This was the first time seeing a back-4 under Conte's tenure, and while it held up okay for the first half, it necessitated keeping Tanganga in the starting XI despite Dier's return, and as much as we all love Japhet as a homegrown player, he just isn't playing well enough to be a starter in a team with Champions League ambitions. Tanganga was also hampered by the yellow card he picked up early on. Speaking of Dier though, he seemed no worse for the wear after his mini injury spell, which is a huge relief. He was one of the few players showing real bravery in attack, which I appreciated, along with Bergwijn and Kane. It was really reassuring to see Bergy put in another good shift after his historic (literally) brace in the Leicester match. Please, please, Tottenham:  don't let him go to Ajax!

Circling back to the defense, we did manage to contain Lukaku pretty well (credit to Sánchez for taking on the lion's share of that work). The problem is that Chelsea's defenders love to score just as much as their attackers, as we saw with Silva later in the match. Of course, you could argue (I certainly did) that Silva should have been sent off long before his goal because of the multiple incidents where he could have picked up a second yellow. Alas, Paul Tierney was not having his best refereeing performance. (Can we even call what refs do a performance? Probably in the case of Mike Dean, if no one else.) But the goal that really set off the beginning of the end of Tottenham's hopes in this match was Ziyech's absolute screamer of a goal. As I like to say, you can't even be mad. He was just that good. And I don't want to hear anything about Hugo needing to do better on saving that shot. It wasn't happening!

As for our own goal chances, which were few and far between, I do think we can feel hard done by on Kane's disallowed goal. Silva flopped, plain and simple. There's no way Kane would have been able to apply that much force with his fully outstretched hand to make Silva go down as hard as he did. Silva took a calculated risk and unfortunately was rewarded for it. But we can take some comfort in the fact that Harry is definitely back in his expected form over the last few games, and if that goal had counted, it would have been a Kane classic.

I don't want to dwell much more on the match, because again, it doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things--beyond our hurt pride.

The transfer window was hanging like a cloud over the proceedings, not just because of the off-the-pitch social media drama, but also because of the reality of the lack of quality reinforcements waiting on the bench (not including players like Lucas and Skipp and Reguilón who do have the quality, but picked up knocks in the last game and weren't going to be allowed to play much if at all). It looks like Dele, Lo Celso, and Ndombele are all likely candidates to be either loaned or sold in this window, but that leaves Spurs in a tricky situation, without any true senior attacking midfielders. Winks and Skipp can get the job done, for sure, but it doesn't change the fact that they're very different players, stylistically, from the ones we are trying to move on. Traoré is sounding like the incoming transfer most likely to happen, but we really need to bring in an attacking midfielder to plug that gap in the squad.

On another personnel note, we at least have the international break ahead to give some of the players who have been injured or dealing with knocks some time to heal up and come back refreshed. Having Romero and Sonny back will be a huge boost, assuming their projected timetables for return were accurate. Plus, our schedule for February isn't too tough, with Manchester City away on the 19th being the biggest challenge. I'm sure Brighton in the FA Cup won't be a walk in the park, but we definitely have the quality to beat them.

Semi-hiatus

Since we only have the Women's matches to look forward to during the Men's international break, the next couple of updates will probably be of the short and sweet variety (especially since I'm not even sure if we'll be able to watch the FA Cup match against Leicester). Of course, that's barring any blockbuster transfer news for either team. So consider Spurs Across the Pond to be on a sort of semi-hiatus for now. You can still find me on Twitter in the meanwhile, most likely cheering half-heartedly for the US teams (y'all know I'm a bigger fan of Germany's Mannschaft) and lamenting the way the San Antonio Spurs season is going (justice for Dejounte!). Enjoy the international break however you spend it!

COYS