AND so it came to pass that in the year of our lord 2026; Tottenham are unable to beat a team unless their name begins with the letter ‘C’ … as curses go, it is an odd one but sure, makes sense for us.
Leeds Utd at Elland Road not an easy game for sure however I had felt of late we showed quality enough to open them up and yet we did not setup in that way; starting three defensive minded midfielders. I can only assume Maddison was making up names on the bench but was not fit as him nether starting nor coming on made little to no sense to many Spurs fans, me included.
It was a very frustrating game, probably as given how we have been playing of late I really felt we could of won – but we did not show that same attitude at all and that is where I go back to mentality and an ongoing issue at this club, no matter the players or manager as why is it before an international break we always switch off or try and coast? It is bizarre as the players must be aware of the narrative now and yet nothing ever changes!?
It is always tough to judge team selections as we as fans are not ever in the full picture on player fitness but seeing creativity on the bench not being used when the game was crying out for it and a team head out for the second half looking lost and disinterested after, what you would hope, would be an inspiring team talk is not great.
For me De Zerbi made mistakes which cost us this game, but the players work rate etc I think is key – they simply were not at it, not like they should have been. 30 minutes of playing decent possession football in a game of 90 us unacceptable.
I do think the referee needs to be highlighted as its stuff like this which drives me personally crazy! I know I cannot be alone… sometime ago this very ref was in charge of a game between us and Liverpool and Xavi was sent off for a challenge on Virgil Van Dijk – an almost identical style of challenge happens with poor Tel injured and not even a yellow card. VAR looked at it so many times it reached a point where it felt like they were working to find a way NOT to give it, all in all a very frustrating example again of decision making being awful.
NOW something which is a change from our usual club position we have actually made a complaint. Lodged formally by the club with the refereeing association, who will review it.
To be clear I HATE this moaning about refs and making formal complaints. Mistakes happen etc etc but you only have to watch how Arsenal get reffed now since they would kick off publicly every week to see that it works – annoying but true – so I am glad we have highlighted this at long last and maybe if a ref or two are blasted for mistakes against us they might actually stop screwing us over.
We were poor in a very low quality game and Leeds probably did do enough to justify the win for them but incidents do change games. Leeds should have been down to ten men, at worst that player should have been on a booking – however what happened was we lost Tel and our players seemed to not really recover from the incident and the feeling of injustice.
Would the result have been different; we do not know but that mistake from the ref certainly had an impact on this game.
-Admin SJ
