It's times like this I was wish I was single because I can't see how I could explain hookers and coke away to the missus. THE DREAM IS OVER. MID-TABLE, PLEASE RETURN TO MY BOSOM cries out the voice in my head as it attempts to scratch its way out to escape from inside my skull.
Lacklustre, complacent, distracted and disjointed. No desire and no apparent attempt to grip the game by its neck and tighten our hands around it slapping it down and forcing it to abide by our rules. If we fail to turn up at Wembley next week I'm going to laugh. Proper laugh out loud with tears. Never ending tears. Of blood.
Credit to Norwich but this was gift wrapped for them. The ref did his best to aid us (two penalty appeals ignored for the visitors) but only time travel and a chalkboard for reference would have saved the day. Early season Spurs wherefore art thou Spurs? An Italian might have the answer to that particular conundrum along with an English man who failed to draw a definitive line under it.
Where (also) has the determined focus, drive and astuteness of the Swansea home game gone? Just when we thought our belief and swagger had returned, it's deserted us again. Just when our manager showed a glimpse of tactics and strategy it wasn't anywhere to be seen on Monday. Selecting eleven players and hoping they just happen to play well isn't good enough. From the boredom at the Stadium of Light to the White broken hearts of the Lane.
Momentum and mojo replaced with morbid misery. We had players for width and yet had no width. We had players of quality with no heart. We had very little of anything that deserved the three points so I really can't argue against it. Saha and Defoe don't work and yet there it was, both of them leading a 4-4-2 formation. Players rested but with Chelsea evident in the forefront of the manager and players.
Still, 442 or not, substitutions made or otherwise, we should be doing more than competing against the likes of Norwich. We should be beating them. We're now the team with the fragile inconsistent mindset. A shadow of what came before.
There is something far more fundamentally at fault here than the inability for professional players at the top end of one of the best leagues in Europe (supposedly) to fail to battle on two fronts. Psychologically we've displayed so much growth and maturity in the past with backbone and fortitude but we are still some what soft when it matters most. There's a failure of control. By manager and players. Both are accountable.
Here's some depressing stats copy and pasted off Twitter:
- Spurs form in last two years since January under Redknapp: Played 34, Won 12, Drawn 13, Lost 9, For 46, Against 40. Just 35% win percentage.
- Spurs before 8th February, the day Capello was sacked: 23 games, 50 points. Over 2 points per game. After: 9 games, 9 points. Two wins, three draws, four defeats. Relegation form.
- 24 - Spurs have gained just 6 points out of a possible 24 in their last 8 Premier League games. Dismal.
No point suggesting X manager at the helm would have had us sitting in 2nd spot. We haven't got X manager. We've got what we've got and until the season ends that isn't going to change. So what now? Don't know about you but I'll do the only thing I can do, the only thing within my power to do. Support. My hands are tied with the rest of it. If the players don't understand the importance of winning all the remaining games, if they don't grasp that reality like I do then there's very little I can do to motivate other than hope. The hard way is the Spurs way is the only way.
So wake the **** up and man up please Tottenham. You're better than this. So much better.