Searching for urgency – and two other issues Spurs need to fix

Trying to get a handle on this season so far hasn’t been easy. Impressed as I was with our start, the Arsenal game and now the West Ham game seemed to halt my sense of optimism. Now I know that’s what being a Spurs fan is all about – but I thought I’d look deeper – what’s missing?

Here are the three things I think Spurs need to address – need to fix – and I think they need to do it fairly sharpish.

1. Our sense of urgency. I can’t be the only one who wants us to have a little bit of ruthless efficiency early on? We still seem to be taking too long to get going in some games and that costs us – I want us to be in the mix early and dictating the game. I’m sure it’s harder for teams to justify parking the bus if they’re two goals down and need to be chasing the game. We need more urgency in the early stages.

2. Our defending at set-pieces. I’d waited a long time to have some free kick specialists in the team and for us to score from those chances. There really is something else when it comes to seeing Baines, Ronaldo, Bale lining up to take a kick against you – it puts fear in teams. But what we have now seems to be the opposite problem. Teams scoring against us from set-pieces when it’s not even specialists. I think a large part of the problem is that we still don’t seem happy with our first choice back four pairing and we can’t keep mixing them about when there is fatigue from European games. I’ve always said playing football on four fronts and being serious about them all is good – but you always have to priortise the league. I want us to have the best chance at Champions League and that means not giving away so many easy goals. We need to tighten up at defending from set-pieces.

3. Soldado and Defoe. I’m not sure what’s going on here to be honest. I have a lot of time for Defoe but I don’t feel his hold-up play is as good as it needs to be. Lets be fair at some times it’s non-existent. I thought we’d brought in Soldado to do this better and whilst he hasn’t set the league alight, I’m not sure swapping the two around is the best way to go. I appreciate we need to create competition for places but something about this just doesn’t feel right. Am I alone in this opinion?

Do you think I’ve identified the first three things we need to fix? Are there more? Am I totally deluded? I’d love to hear what you think in the comments below.