‘Shocking’ – Alan Hutton claims Nuno’s recent decision has massively backfired

Alan Hutton has said that Nuno Espirito Santo took a huge risk by leaving his entire first-choice eleven back in London for the Europa Conference League clash against Vitesse Arnhem, with the decision having backfired.

Tottenham’s second-string eleven put in an extremely poor display in Holland on Thursday with the home side emerging as deserved 1-0 winners.

That result has now left the North Londoners with plenty of work to do in the remaining games to qualify for the knockout stages of the competition.

Nuno’s first-choice eleven were not much better against West Ham on Sunday after they fell to another 1-0 loss, which was their fourth London derby defeat of the season.

The Sun reported on Monday that the Portuguese coach’s decision to use a two-tier squad system for the Conference League and the Premier League has not gone down well with the players and has created a chasm in the dressing room.

Hutton did not hold back from his criticism of Tottenham’s performances against Vitesse and West Ham.

The former Spurs defender told Football Insider: “I covered the Vitesse game and I thought it was a risk to leave the whole starting XI at home.

“If you want to rest players, I understand that, that’s fine but have them on the bench with you. Bring them on to change the game if you need to.

“They were so poor, they were shocking against Vitesse. I was sitting there thinking: ‘Oh my, I can’t believe I have to cover this.’ It was that bad.

“To move on to the West Ham game, you’ve got your starting XI back and they looked flat. It was a flat performance. Harry Kane had hardly any touches, second half not a shot on goal.

“You would expect them to overrun West Ham. They had a game midweek and they played a strong team. Really poor. A risk that did not pay off.”

Spurs Web Opinion

The results dictate how these kinds of decisions are received. So, it is not surprising to see Nuno being hammered for his decision since we have lost both matches.

However, none of us really wanted to be in the Conference League and most fans wanted to see the youngsters/second-string to be used through the group stages. The bigger issue was our performance against West Ham on Sunday.

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