It seems that everyone is either in the camp of "we lost to Spurs, JED out" or "Spurs were the best thing since sliced bread, there is nothing we could do about it". I don't agree with either viewpoint.
Spurs were class and Eiriksen in particular was outstanding and thoroughly deserved a hat trick but selflessly allowed the carthorse up front to take a penalty as a confidence boost presumably after a terrible debut. I wasn't surprised or disappointed that we lost and lost convincingly - Spurs are a class act; however that isn't a carte Blanche to not offer any analysis or criticism where due. I was personally disappointed that we didn't do simple and sensible things well. For me, and I obviously only saw it live and a sketchy replay on the not so big screen, but Nelson was yet again to blame for the first two goals - not out and out howlers, but the Erikson first shot, whilst absolutely drilled looked to be straight at hit; the second one seemed to go through him too. The third goal, whilst a blatant penalty, came as a result of an almost identical foul on osadebe (I think) further upfield that the ref totally ignored (whilst not giving anything outstandingly bad) he did favour the home team and premier league team all night in 50/50s which I guess is usual.
Other areas I thought we could do better, were we were not physical enough, which surely is a natural way of evening things up, there were a number of occasions we didn't do simple things at the back - Ie clear easy balls or mark crosses or corners allowing free headers (this had nothing to do with penalty league quality), up front we should have done things more simply - for example, JET, Jackson, Dack and Osadebe had the ball in decent positions around the box and should have got a cross in early or shot from range, but instead messed about with it, trying to be too intricate - surely against quality like Spurs (defensively as well as possession wise) you try to take every half opportunity that opens?
I actually thought we battled well the first half. Oshilaja, Ehmer and Bond were good. Konchesky was decent defensively but on the ball he doesn't look great and makes wrong decisions for someone with such experience and whose played at a high level. Jackson did some good work going forward, but made some bad choices going forward, Wright had his best game for a while, but have it away too often in deep and dangerous areas, Dack was quiet on a night for him to impress, Cody run tirelessly but was given little service, but for me should have been pushed on a lot more given he was The only outlet forward, JET put a decent shift in in a strange right wing position and battled for a lot as a we seemed to have a game plan to hit him with everything in w wide right position - when he got it down he did ok but is poor in the air for a giant.
All in, some encouragement, we expected to lose to a class side and did, but did we do the best we could? For me, no - we could have done a lot of simple things better and just kept things simple and sensible.
