Gallery: Player Ratings – Liverpool 2-1 Tottenham Hotspur

Alderweireld – 6

Alderweireld – 6
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We might have looked for leadership from this experienced campaigner but he seemed as desperate and uncertain as the rest. He stuck to the task but was unable to exert any control or authority.

The messages were clear from the outset. This is to be a squad playing structure with no one frozen out and no one a guaranteed starter and the tactics and formations will change from game to game.

The TV seemed to pick up Jesus telling the players in the warm up to ‘attack, attack, attack’. Yeh, right. That strategy was in place for all of fifty seconds. Then it was a four-five defensive unit.

At Spurs, because we struggle so badly at home against this tactic, we forget that nine times out of ten the tactic is overwhelmed by the team capable of actually playing football.

It was also painful to watch after, by general consensus, we played the pressing game we should be playing last time out to great success. After discovering a winning formula, Pochettino downplayed the significance perhaps because he knew he would abandon it immediately – he changed both a winning team and a successful plan. Hmmm?

We had one moment manufactured by Son and Kane – right now, to be frank, two race horses in a donkey derby. Late on, some subs appeared and actually demonstrated that they could retain possession, even move the ball forward.

Most sickening of all for Spurs supporters, as we plunge close to the relegation dogfight, the whole approach made the gulf in class between ourselves and Liverpool absolutely in-your-face-with-a-klaxon obvious: we look sh*t.

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