Seagulls Sully the Vibe

A downturn in form sees Spurs Men lose 0-1 at home to Brighton | A week's worth of Spurs Women contract news | Previewing the weekend matchups

I suppose Spurs were flying a little too close to the sun, because the loss to Brighton on Saturday forced us to come back down to earth. Well, sort of--I'm still very confident that Spurs will finish in the top 4 despite the lackluster performance on the weekend. Partially because two out of our three top 4 rivals dropped points, but also because I know we are capable of playing much better than this. Sometimes players have a bad game; we were unlucky that basically everyone on the pitch for Tottenham was having an off night, and Brighton were shrewd enough to take advantage (although it took some individual heroics from Leandro Trossard).

For the most part, it was just a flat, spiritless performance from the whole squad (including most of the subs), so I'm not going to dwell on the particulars too closely for this issue. Let's hit a few important points and then move on as the season always does.

• Kulusevski being hampered by a yellow card early on was a big obstacle. And fair play to Brighton's Marc Cucurella, who barely let Deki get a foot in edgewise. Our beloved ginger from Sweden was due at least one lukewarm game this season, and it's not like he was alone amongst his teammates in having an ineffective match.

• That's where the dominos all started to fall, however, thanks to some less-than-ideal substitution decisions from Conte. I was disappointed to see Lucas brought on for Kulusevski instead of Bergwijn. What does Bergy have to do to get a fair shot at some quality minutes? It's baffling. And Lucas definitely didn't impact the game. If it was a matter of Bergwijn not being comfortable playing on the right flank, Conte could have shifted Son over to replace Deki and given Bergwijn his preferred left flank. Conte followed the first substitution up with another ill-advised choice, Winks for Bentancur. We hadn't seen Winks in what felt like weeks, and it showed in his disconnected performance. I would have rather seen Sessegnon brought on for Reguilón, who once again missed a great chance to score (Doherty's presence is already missed). When Bergwijn was finally brought on for Son, it was too little, too late. And I almost think Kane should have been the man to go instead of Son, who at least had a couple of chances earlier in the match, while Kane had been largely frustrated. So all in all, not the best in-game management from Conte (that goes for his lack of adjustment to Brighton's tactics, too).

• I generally try to avoid assigning any portion of the blame for a loss to the refereeing, but I also cannot tell a lie. Once again, Spurs suffered from a poor first half of refereeing decisions. Brighton's Enock Mwepu (who scored their game-winner against Arsenal last week) could easily have earned a second yellow card for several offenses. But Craig Pawson evidently disagreed, and Mwepu was subbed off at halftime to live another matchday without a suspension. I won't go so far as to say that there has been anti-Tottenham bias in the reffing lately, but I will say that it has unequivocally been below the standard you would expect from PL referees. Then again, I should know better by now than to expect quality reffing from these repeat offenders.

• On one positive note, I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) this was the cutoff by which Romero had to avoid picking up too many yellow cards for the season-long threshold, so it's a relief that he won't have a suspension looming over him anymore. Not that we'd seen any noticeable diminishment in his aggressive style of play! He was walking a tightrope and didn't slip up, so well done, Cuti.

The lesser London derby

As far as I’m aware (here's my overseas fan blind spot popping up), Brentford isn’t a significant derby matchup, but most of the London teams seem to wind up developing an intense rivalry with Tottenham, so give the Bees long enough in the PL and I’m sure an enmity will materialize.

On the other hand, fans of the current Spurs and Brentford teams have a common love:  Christian Eriksen. Everyone's favorite Dane (sorry, PEH) picked right up where he left off when he joined Brentford on a six-month deal in January, and he's been integral to their recent upturn in form. He's already notched one goal and two assists in six appearances, five of them starts. And when he looks this happy doing it, you can't begrudge the man playing for the wrong team... for now. We can only hope he'll come back to the right corner of London over the off-season.

Eriksen got the winning assist in Brentford's 1-2 away win over Watford in the last matchday. Ivan Toney also seems to be back in top form after a middling winter stretch. He scored and assisted in their previous matchup, another win, against West Ham. And who could forget the thrilling 1-4 away win at Stamford Bridge? That scoreline includes an Eriksen goal (pictured above), another Toney assist, and a brace from midfielder Vitaly Janelt, another player to watch. They've scored at least once in every match since the beginning of March, and only had one loss since then (a narrow 2-1 defeat at Leicester). Why am I firing off all these stats and scorelines? Well, mostly for myself, so I remember not to take this Brentford team lightly.

Closing down Eriksen's creative passing work is going to be a big challenge for our defense--but I guess the likes of Dier and Davies do have the benefit of knowing Eriksen's style of play very well from all the years they played alongside him. For the love of all that is holy, let's at least limit the number of set-pieces for Eriksen to take advantage of.

But I think the #1 priority has to be getting Spurs' forward line firing again after such a drab showing against Brighton. It's starting to feel a bit ridiculous how long Kane has gone without scoring a goal (*cue flashbacks to the Nuno era*), but surely that won't continue. He'll be hungry for a goal on Saturday, as well as continuing to chip away at the other record he and Son are close to breaking (most PL assists from one player to the same teammate). And Deki will want to make up for lost time after his early substitution in the Brighton game.

Honestly, it's going to be a fascinating game of football, as long as both sides turn up. Let's hope that's the case--but with Spurs to come out on top, of course.

Spurs Women already setting up for next season

With a bit of the momentum lost for this current WSL season now that top 3 is basically out of reach, the club has already shifted its focus to preparing for next season (we do still have to play those last five matches though, however reluctant we might be to take on Chelsea twice). It was a huge news week for the Women's side, with new contracts for manager Rehanne Skinner and key players Kit Graham and Ashleigh Neville. It's great to see the club prioritizing these core assets to the team when planning for our next WSL campaign. The ceiling for this team is super high under Rehanne's leadership, and I'm glad she's being trusted to carry out her vision for the club.

I wrote a piece over at Spurs Women Blog about how important these contracts are to the future of Spurs Women, and what I think Rehanne's top three priorities should be as she plans for next season. Give it a read, and also check out some of the other recent posts on the fansite. I particularly enjoyed this one weighing up the options for replacing Ria Percival in the lineup while she's recovering from the ACL injury she picked up during the international break. That's definitely a quandary for Rehanne to solve in the business end of the season! I'm personally hoping to see Asmita Ale given the start on Sunday.

Speaking of the end of the season, the run-in starts now with a matchup hosting Chelsea this Sunday, followed by the reverse fixture just four days later at Kingsmeadow. Playing any team twice in the space of five days is never a pleasing prospect, let alone the reigning title-holders. They're coming off a big win against Arsenal in the FA Cup semi-finals.

I try to be positive when it comes to both of our Tottenham teams and genuinely believe we can compete with most teams on our day, but Chelsea Women just might be the most formidable opponent across both leagues, Men or Women. Even just looking at their roster to write this preview is bumming me out because they have so many world-class, difference-maker players. It reinforces that if we are truly going to make the leap from being a mid-table WSL team to one that challenges for the Champions League spots next season (which we can!), it's going to take some legitimate investment and commitment from the club to bring in the type of quality players that make up the majority of the squads at clubs like Chelsea, Arsenal, and Manchester City (this is not a slight at Manchester United, but rather a compliment--they have done a lot with far less star power than the other three top clubs).

All of that being said, this Spurs Women team never says die, and I expect to see a spirited performance on Sunday regardless of the result. And I suppose the one benefit to playing the same team back-to-back is that you get a chance right away to analyze the first match and make adjustments for the second game without having to wait weeks or even months to put those learnings into use. Even getting a point out of these two fixtures would be a big achievement.

COYS