Player Ratings: Spurs 0-1 Fulham

Hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. Where is the desire? Where is the creativity? Where are the goals? Is this the start of a collapse? I hope not. But we need to turn this patch of form around. Fulham outplayed us, at home, and we hardly even looked like scoring. Unbelievably poor.

Hugo Lloris – 6 – hardly had a thing to do. Couldn’t really have done much for their goal.

Kyle Naughton – 5 – contributed very little going forward – the other Kyle is better at that. Defensively solid but had absolutely nothing to do.

Michael Dawson – 6 – didn’t do anything wrong: in the first half Fulham didn’t pose any sort of attacking threat and then he was hauled off for Dempsey at half time.

Steven Caulker – 5 – not sure about his positioning for the Fulham goal, didn’t show any attacking threat…not the greatest performance.

Jan Vertonghen – 6 – looked mildly threatening on the left flank in the first half, but caught out of position in the second half for the Fulham goal.

Scott Parker – 4 – I’m sorry to say it, but this man is past it. He shouldn’t be in the Spurs team anymore. Tom Carroll did more when he came on than Parker has done in the last three months.

Mousa Dembele – 5 – can’t really describe him as bad, but then can’t really describe him as good. His job is to create, and keep a tempo up; he did neither of those things.

Gylfi Sigurdsson – 5 – not given enough of the ball, so couldn’t really do anything with it. Should have done better with a first half shot. Subbed off for Defoe so we can go to our famously successful 4-4-2.

Benoit Assou-Ekotto – 4 – hopeless on the left wing, still hopeless when he reverted to his favoured left back slot. Didn’t hit a good cross in the 90 minutes.

Gareth Bale – 4 – did absolutely nothing. Picked up a knock at the end of the first half and seemed to be carrying that through the whole of the second half. Not involved in the game.

Emmanuel Adebayor – 4 – showed a bit more energy and enthusiasm but simply posed no goalscoring threat. I think he and Defoe are having a competition to see who can not get picked.

Substitutes:

Clint Dempsey – 5 – looked to get himself involved in the game, but, in all truth, failed. He and Bale needed to link up more; staying on opposite flanks for the whole second half was a poor idea.

Jermain Defoe – 4 – missed two glorious chances to equalise. Desperately needs a goal for confidence: at least he looks like he has more of a threat than Adebayor.

Tom Carroll – 7 – the one bright spark in a terrible game. This boy could be something special in the future; he needs to start ahead of Parker for the rest of the season.

It’s hard to tell what went wrong. Was it AVB’s tactics, was it the effects of Thursday night or was it the personnel themselves? Fortunately, Spurs now have a two week break before their next fixture, and they will be able to regroup and recover. We’re still top 4, 4 points ahead of Arsenal, and we can still finish top 4. Trust AVB.

By Alex Beck