By Brian Bariyo Tumuramye
England: The ten-goal week for Tottenham Hotspur, a defensive apocalypse in two parts for Mauricio Pochettino, the first against a Bayern Munich side among the best in Europe and the second, five days later, against a club in Sussex who have not won a league game since their opener.
Hard to keep track of all the ways that last season’s Champions League finalists fell apart against a snappy, confident Brighton and Hove Albion although it should be said there was one goal that looked like the first of the four that Serge Gnabry scored on Tuesday night. Pochettino changed the system and recalled contract refusenin Christian Eriksen, he substituted Heung-Min Son to boos from his own fans and once again his future and that of the club feels in the balance.
The injury to Hugo Lloris looked so bad that Pochettino conceded it had an effect on his players, as you might expect when a team-mate is carried off shrieking in pain, although it requires much less these days to disrupt the rhythm of this Spurs team. Lloris fell on his left arm in the act of conceding the first goal, a suspected dislocation of the elbow, and he was administered oxygen on the pitch to help with the pain while his team-mates contemplated his distress.
It seems to matter less now that it unfolded as the World Cup winner made yet another dreadful error, as costly as the one that had gifted Southampton a goal the previous week, this time misjudging a cross and forced to drop it before he carried it over his own line. Lloris’ volatile performance level, liable to go up and down over the course of a game, was last week’s problem and it would have been this week’s too had he not suffered the kind of injury that means he will be missing for some time.
A goal and a goalkeeper down with three minutes played, the game was hardly over for Spurs but they look incapable of the kind of the composure required. Eric Dier, Erik Lamela and Eriksen were all recalled to the starting team set up as a 4-2-3-1 and all of them were well off the level required. Pochettino switched to a three-man back-line for the second half and was punished again, Brighton’s 19-year-old Aaron Connolly isolating Toby Alderweireld for the third goal.
That one looked suspiciously like the first Gnabry scored on Tuesday, a younger, faster attacker cutting in from the left on his right foot and wrapping a shot into the corner with the Belgian failing even to offer a challenge. Connolly had got his first after half an hour, tucking home the rebound after Paulo Gazzaniga had saved his first effort and at three goals behind just after the hour, whatever threat Spurs offered with their new system faded badly.
Pochettino admitted later that “after five and half years [at the club], it’s the first time that it is a really difficult situation”. “Punched” was how he described the feeling for the last five days, and then some more philosophical points about the vicissitudes of life compared to the kind of hand the game can deal you. He is often more composed in defeat and this time was no different, although it will be the nature of this one that concerns him the most.
“I’m not worried,” he said. “What does ‘worry’ mean in life? What scares me is life, not football. Football is a game that sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Our habit was to win, win, win and be praised by everyone. The last two games were tough to accept. But I don’t want to talk in a way that is not good. What scares me is life. What we are going to do is face the negative things. We are going to work hard to change the dynamic.”
It went wrong from the moment that the French striker Neal Maupay headed in the first inside three minutes when Lloris dropped it at his feet. Maupay was signed from Brentford in the summer, joint second-highest goalscorer in the Championship last season and one of many Football League graduates who impressed. So too Adam Webster, 24, the centre-back bought from Bristol City. Steven Alzate, 21, a North Londoner of Colombian heritage, spent last season on loan at Swindon Town in League Two. Connolly was the toast of the club with two goals on his first Premier League start.
For Graham Potter, whose side had not won since the opening day of the season against Watford, and not at home until this game, it was an important moment. “It helps when you have players who don’t have much and fear and want to try stuff and do something,” he said. “These players have that mentality and that quality.”
They have a manager who is prepared to take risks too, and in pushing Connolly up against Alderweireld he had a striker who was prepared to run onto the ball behind the defenders. Connolly was on loan at Luton Town at the end of last season and only came into the English academy system when he was signed aged 16 as a scholar from Mervue United in Galway and in the second tier of Irish league football. He irritated Dier sufficiently that the Englishman barged his teenage opponent to the ground on one occasion.
There was another performance from Tanguy Ndombele that was difficult to reconcile: some good moments, and then other when he abdicated defensive responsibility. Pochettino had selected him in a midfield defensive pair with Dier but at half-time replaced the Frenchman with Harry Winks and pushed Dier into the back three. Later, when the game was out of reach, Pochettino was booed when he replaced Son with Lucas Moura on 72 minutes. Harry Kane barely registered an attempt on the Brighton goal worthy of the name.
Spurs will announce in the coming days the extent of the injury to Lloris, with early reports suggesting that if it is a dislocation he will be out for at least two months. There were unconfirmed reports after the game that no break had been discovered and that the 32-year-old would be discharged from hospital in the evening. From the BT Sport studio Joe Cole observed that the goalkeeper had got himself into a bad position in the first place. “Why he hasn’t tipped it over the bar, I don’t know,” Cole said. “It’s a mistake he makes a lot.” He thought Spurs looked “in disarray” and Pochettino “uninterested”.
The man himself was putting a brave face on it. “I don’t want to be a philosopher, or talk in a way that is not good,” Pochettino said. “What scares me is life, not football. Football is to be strong and brave and make decisions.” Decisions for many at the club to make – but of what kind, and do they govern who stays, and who goes?
