The international break was a quick reminder that we are Spurs and terrible things always conspire against us when things are going well. Our International Break From Hell saw 4 players pick up injuries (Son, Skipp, Bergwijn and Sessegnon) and 3 players get put into quarantine because they disobeyed club and health orders not to play for their country (Romero, Sanchez and Lo Celso). Injuries happen, but the pure idiocy of our South American contingent was self-inflicted stupidity of the highest order. So that means possibly up to 5 of the starting XI Nuno selected for the first 3 games will not be available.
Maybe I wasn't paying attention, but I thought the premier league had an agreement not to release players for this break. So I was really surprised to hear the Argies were off. They surely must have gotten an ok from the club to go? Sanchez potentially the biggest loss from the starters. Rodon + Dier then? Some of those injuries don't seem too serious, from what I've read, though Sess is definitely out.
!. What is going on with Rodon? He seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. 2. The club made it very clear to the South Americans that they were not allowed to play, but they went anyway, with the consequences for all to see. 3. Why I Hate International Football, Part XVII: Alphonso Davies mysteriously came up with what was called a "knee injury" and was not in the Canadian squad for Wednesday's 3-0 win over El Salvador (not that we needed him as it turns out), but miraculously turned up for Bayern Munich's training session on Thursday.
So, I check the score when I woke this AM. 0-0 66th. Hmmm... not as good as it should be. Roll out of bed, do the waking up stuff and come downstairs to tune in on SlingTV and WTF? 0-1 to Palace... then Palace score with newest signing moments after debut... We are risibly awful today, giving Palace their first win of the season, at 2-0... oops, as I write this, 3-0, and some BS about the "French Revolution has begun..." Oh. and we have a 0 GD. Spursie.
The attack was anemic in the first three games. Take out Son, our most dangerous player, and replace him with Winks. Obviously that was going to be a disaster - not that Winks played badly, but he does not offer any of what Son can do. If they wanted to play the same sort of system, Gil would have been a better replacement for Son. I suppose the idea was that Reguilon and Royal would provide some offense? They didn't. 0-0 would have been a good result, but then Tanganga went insane. Surprising, because I always thought staying cool and calm was one of his better attributes.
That was a reality check and proof that this is a squad still in transition. Fabio Paratici has a lot of work to do to get this side back to where we were under Poch. The most glaring weakness for me is the lack of creativity in midfield. Gallagher ran the game for them, whereas our mids barely touched the ball and when they did, they just gave it away. We still haven't replaced Eriksen and Dembele. It shows how strong the Chelsea squad is if they can loan a player like Gallagher, who would walk into most PL Xis, including ours. Lo Celso and Ndombele were brought in for this reason, but the former has yet to show he belongs in our starting XI and the latter is a dickhead who wants out of the club. The lack of squad depth was horribly exposed after our International Break From Hell. The Three Amigos (Romero, Lo Celso and Sanchez) ended up in quarantine from pure stupidity, while Son and Bergie's absence from injury was a killer. The manager didn't cover himself in glory with his team selection, I mean why was Winks selected ahead of Gil if your strategy was to play on the counter? And after we went behind on a predictable gaffe from Ben Davies, he just sat there in the dugout like a muppet and didn't try to change anything. And I haven't gotten to the self-inflicted in-game idiocy: Lloris's ill-advised roll-out to Dier got the defender injured, which had the knock-on effect of having the inept Davies come on later in the game after the equally idiotic Tanganga got himself sent off like a ponce amateur. Until players like Winks and Davies are eradicated from the squad, this kind of performance and result will be the norm, until Paratic completes the overhaul of the squad.