PLAYER RATINGS: Watford 2-1 Tottenham Hotspur

Subs

Image 12 of 12

Llorente looked clumsy, as ever. Winks was a ray of sunshine. Rose’s shot at the end was pie in the sky, like someone throwing a pie in the sky.

Our general thoughts

Mauricio Pochettino talks a lot about ‘fight’. The Spurs team demonstrated a lack of it in two quite different ways. In the first half, they played with no urgency and performed, as they sometimes can, as if the result is to be a foregone conclusion – winning just a matter of time. In a critical period in the second half, their lack of fight was evident when they were completely bullied off the park. Watford deserved their win.

Spurs haven’t been right in any of the games this season and Pochettino spoke about knowing that to be the case in the course of the week. There’s been a sense that they’ve ‘got away with it’ in each of the games this season. Today, they didn’t.

Pochettino, whatever he may say in public, will be livid, doubly so since this wretched international break has fallen just at the time when the players should be learning from this experience.

Related Topics